


Guardian of the Spark

by primeling



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Non-Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Sticky Sex, body desecration, minor cannibalism, paranormal horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-02-11 12:55:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2068998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeling/pseuds/primeling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cybertron may have been reborn, however as the displaced citizens begin to return to their homeworld much follows them. Return comes the setting rust, the corruption that tainted and destroyed their world. Exiled into the mines and a phantom that walks, Megatron observes as the plight changes. In his frustration and his desperation, Megatron goes to Primus to demand the obvious. Gods, however, adhere to the wisdom of wishes: be careful what you ask for.</p><p>Post Predacon's Rising; Reborn Orion Pax; Protector Megatron in the works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really like Hobotrons. So, I wrote Hobotron. Have a Hobotron arguing with Primus.
> 
> Alright, this is honesty. I do not wish to beg for commentary, however, they are very hopeful, and while Kudos are appreciated... the comments really drive me forward. I'd love to see remarks particularly what stands out to someone. Fearful of becoming another fan fic writer to abandon stories, I used to try and finish fics before I start to post them. However, nothing would get done save for one-shots. Trying a new method. So, yes, please comment if you'd be so kind.
> 
> This fic began after the first leak of PR, and was the product of coping with the final minutes and OP's current fate.
> 
> Betas: Anoddreindeer & Andromeda_Prime
> 
> 1/11/15 - First revision completed.

From the rebuilding civilization he abstained, from a distance he observed; in exile all he was capable of was observation. Hidden in the old mines which he once toiled, the once Lord of the Decepticons lurked and hid away. Long ago he had been nameless, an undeveloped mind that no one thought of, barely more than a mere drone. It took violence to assert his identity, and the identity that came of it was that which none were soon to forget.

It was better in the outskirts, away from those who might look upon him for what he was: a fallen hero who betrayed their entire world and plunged it into a cataclysmic war; he had thought he knew of oppression, but it had always been only his body shackled to the constraints of his build. Then came the Chaos Bringer, whose blood tainted him from returning to the _Well of AllSparks_ , and stole his frame for his own purposes. His mind became a prisoner, inflicted with a thousand deaths that never ended.

Shame was not the factor that isolated him, nor was the healthy knowledge that he would be more than unwelcome. It was the burgeoning sense of loss that would not leave. It wrapped around his spark and squeezed the chamber’s walls tight. The caverns of the old mines became his refuge and his sanctuary, where he could dwell on his self-indulgent pity and contemplate. He walked alone and flew out of sight; a streak of engines in the sky. Many of his flights took him over the cities as they began to take shape again.

The spires of Kaon would once more begin to climb towards the stars, Crystal City began to gleam under Hadeen's light, and Iacon had once more began to breathe life into the culture in the fragile grace of twin moonlight. Hadeen shone down upon their world as life began to return with iridescent majesty; each a kindling ember, more fragile than the next.

Megatron stood as witness when the Hall of Record's lights flickered on; a twinkling reminder of by-gone times sacrificed and lost for his actions of old. He knew of Optimus' peaceful sacrifice, which had returned a font of life to the husk of Cybertron; what point was there to a reborn world if it failed to play host to new generations? What was the point of anything if their generations would be the last?

For many dawns he flew over and peered into the Well, each time in hope to catch a glimpse of the shimmering light within. From his position in space, he watched as if to catch a glimmer of light that might be a sparkling remnant of his old enemy and older friend; they were fallen stars, and shapeless wishes. The glow of the _Well_ was a reminder that in complete darkness light would shine the brightest.

Those who returned to their planet sometimes came in droves and sometimes as a trickle. But, the civilization did more than rebuild the fortresses and halls. They rebuilt their old ways and corruption crawled out like a sticky pollutant from the primordial ashes.

Rust began to set in, even while the primer was still wet.

One dawn, before the sun had even begun to reach the horizon, as the wash of light was still fresh on the midnight sky, Megatron stared downward into the _Well_ from his place in flight.

Turbines and thrusters fired with determination, and in a burst he rose higher and higher, back towards the faded starlight. Mechanisms stalled to an idle, and the silence of infinite space met with this muted reprieve. Gravity paused, it's hold forgotten and catch loosened, and for the longest span of a mere blink, Megatron hung suspended between Cybertron's warm atmosphere and the cold vacuum of space.

Just where Megatron longed to stay: suspended in a state of inanimation and without existence. Left behind was memories of Cybertron's ashes and the grime of planet Earth that followed him across the stellar distances. Within that stasis he floated, with freedom yet unexperienced in the past. Flight was wonderful, yet it also was defiant and unnatural to the sparked grounder.

Alas, gravity remembered who he was and took hold, dragging him down with a slow and fluttered descent.

He fell into a dive. Freer than Megatron had ever been, the heavy mech felt much of Earth’s wretched debris burn up and ignite around him like a meteor's tail. Initially he allowed momentum’s trajectory to guide him towards his goal, and yet he still fell off the course. Determined not to lose his mark, the engines roared to life and afterburners ignited as the last fall-away debris cooled.

Penetration was simple enough, for despite the lessons of the war, no one else on Cybertron thought to dare use the _Well_ for their personal gain, and weapons were still considered sacrilege to be in proximity; only Megatron had ever been that monstrous. Only he would dare to go into the _Well_.

On the surface, the people of Cybertron continued to go about their business of living and rebuilding, with only a few murmurs of a small falling star that had disappeared into the _Well_. No one knew that Megatron had gone in to speak with Primus.

Passed the tunnels and altars, banisters and balconies, he dived into the light. In the distance he could make out the breathing blue light of the Well — the shade of optics that haunted him. As gravity worked eagerly with his flight, Megatron’s speed towards the core became critical. Warning lines shot into his HUD, and he ignored them in turn.

With each milliklik he came closer to the light and all the winking stars of the unreleased sparks. Through the ether he poured himself, and became washed in a sea of unheard voices. The ethereal choir whispered into his spark, and echoed as he departed deeper into Cybertron’s core.

The _AllSpark_ had not been his destination.

The core came closer and closer, a bright chasm of sealed away blue that stared at him as a god’s eye. On a pivot turn he reversed his engines in order to calm the fall, but he knew it only slowed the descent and yet at least it would regain his control.

He landed with a mighty sound, one that echoed with the wicked ferocity of his new image. He reemerged from his flight form, one knee bent on the ground and a fist pressed into the metal of his motherworld. Megatron knelt prostrate for what felt an eternity, to marvel at the reality of what he intended, all while his systems balanced and gyros stabilized.

Demonic optics were raised with uncharacteristic humility, but were tethered by determination.

This was the audience hall where Orion Pax reemerged as Optimus Prime; this was where the children came to see Primus.

Megatron had never been one to give much respect to the spirituality of his people. To him, the superstitions were exploitable fears to utilize, and the occult a tool to aid him. He spent much of his existence dismissing the reality of their mystical people, particularly the source of what gave them life and their strength.

When he rose, Megatron flexed his thoracic plates, not to intimidate with his size, but to expand the surface of his armor into the warm light of Primus; he wanted to test whether he could feel that divine heat.

He stood there stock-still, aware that he had been made in Unicron’s image, and was almost completely antithetical to the audience he sought.

However, still that mech on a mission, he spoke with all the reverence he could, though still in a tone that conveyed his refusal to be ignored.

"I seek an audience with Primus, creator of Cybertron and the race of Cybertronians," he called out.

The eye of the core rotated to look at him, and Megatron wondered if it peered into his spark. He was possessed with an urge to fall prostate, to state his recalcitrant plea for absolution. However, that was not wholly why he was here nor the method he sought to find it.

No other response came, only the bright sight that watched him. When the silence continued to stretch onward, Megatron offlined his optics and began to comb through the drafts of soliloquy he had composed in his internal systems; all of them should have been disregarded, for how could he ask something now?

That which Megatron sought to ask for was not for him, not solely. From the light he turned his armored helm, even before he returned function to his optics.

In the edges of his visual field, Megatron saw what he once longed for, and now unexpectedly found an unsightly form: the empty frame of Optimus Prime. It was gray and lifeless, now suffering a blight of rust that ate away at the armor, spark spent and the chamber laid open and exposed. He could see the dusty shine of the _Matrix of Leadership_ ’s gilded housing. Both the Disciple and Vessel of Primus were dark and void of light.

Megatron turned back to look at the light of Primus, driven by the stubborn reminder of why he came and that he did not back down, even to Gods.

"I come for the return of the Prime," Megatron said so bold.

No answer came immediately after his proclamation, and Megatron was left to stare back into the blinding light. Megatron could make out shifts in the mechanical gears as the aperture opened and closed. He felt as if he was waiting for the core to consider his words, to consider _him_ , and to deem whether or not it would humor him.

As he waited he tried not to look at the empty husk of his adversary, or give in to temptation and watch the chaotic swirl of lights that swarmed within the _Allspark_. Although his chronometer informed him of each nanoklik that passed, it counted upwards until a megacycle had been recorded.

His actuators groaned as he shifted his gargantuan weight, and the plates ruffled as dust from the old mines fell onto the floor of the chamber. It felt as if his patience was to be tested, and he had to pass lest his request be denied on the merit of such a basic failure. All that was left was to wait.

* * *

At last the wish of an entire race had been granted: their world restored, the war ended, and those responsible for the reign of tyranny had either defected or had been eliminated in one capacity or another. Ultra Magnus knew that he now faced the long task of rebuilding Cybertron, but his efforts would not be alone. All he had to concern him was whether those efforts would be in vain; he was not built or programmed for leadership over civilians, or the reconstruction of an entire race. This was the sort of task that would have been under the purview of Optimus Prime. But, under the guise of peaceful requirements, Prime had been lost to their war's death rattle.

The sky over Cybertron had long since returned to the quiet twinkle of distant stars and the fill of their moons. Still, the Commander could remember with vivid recollection the shower of light that fell from the Well’s rapturous display at the _AllSpark_ ’s reunion with the core. Silence came since, and Ultra Magnus was left to stare at the glimmering darkness. In the horizon he had a feeble hope, a distant sort that was illogical and pure folly: that a speck of light would come from the direction of the _Well_ , and Prime would return to their people at the dawn of this new hour of need.

But, he was not a dreamer, and he knew that no amount of dreams would ever solve the needs of the many. Their need was great, a subtle one that was left unspoken by all but a few. Simply put, there was no clear leader for the Cybertronian people. Prime was lost and the lineage had been broken. Many remnants of the old political guard had been killed or were still missing since the exodus. In the vacuum of leadership, straggling sojourners of those who had returned, now looked to the remnants of Prime’s Autobots to fill the void left behind by Prime, and in turn they looked to him.

What a mistake that was.

Now, Ultra Magnus stood outside the remains of Iacon, with his gaze far far away into the distance where he watched memories of the _Well_ ’s light. Behind him was the continuous loop of Team Prime’s voices converged to one senseless drone that pounded against the walls. With a glance at the window’s reflective surface, he took in the ease at which Bumblebee stood beside Smokescreen and the other Wreckers; the young scout had more than come into his own since the return of his voice, and Ultra Magnus almost wished he could in good conscience hand over command to find some reprieve from civilian matters.

Almost, but Magnus did not do so. He did, however, turn to face what was left of Prime’s troops and regard them all.

“In summary, soldiers,” so said the Commander with a tone too soft for the battlefield, though the best he had found to employ in such matters.

Silence came over the troops, but it did not last long. Arcee was the first to speak up, “As more and more return to Cybertron we are running low on energon, and it is getting difficult to figure out where to send essential requisitions to. Energon isn't our only resource we’re low on. Lubricants, oils, and solvents are low. There is a flood of requests for additional welding material. Refugees are demanding many of the resources that those on the rebuilding details are not getting enough.”

“Many of those refugees have gone without proper maintenance since Cybertron’s Exodus. These people need those supplies!” Ratchet’s voice interjected without warning.

Arcee was up for the discussion. “We’re lucky the Eradicons and Vehicons are so efficient. But without adequate rations even they are going to slow down, and that means a big problem for those refugees who need things like shelter.”

Bright blue optics came to meet with the former Captain of the Elite Guard, and Ultra Magnus still stalled when he heard the sound of Bumblebee’s voice. “That’s another problem. We've got some fighting over what shelter and buildings we do have. There have been some staking a claim for more than they need. But, since they were formerly members of the higher castes no one wants to tell them to beat it. They hog the rations and impose unfair favoritism for themselves. That’s probably a big contributing factor to the ration shortage.”

“So, mecha spoiled by the caste system assume they can waltz right in and reclaim their pampered privilege while we’re still laboring away to rebuild Cybertron,” Wheeljack grumbled from his place against the far wall.

“It is more than that.” Bumblebee paused to look around at those he considered his elders, which was just about everyone in company. “There has been a lot of infighting. We've got former Autobot supporters claiming that former Decepticons are taking more than their ‘ _fair share_ ’,” he emphasized words of interest with a quotation movement of his digits — indubitably something he picked up from the humans. “And lots of thievery accusations have been going on. It’s hard to keep the peace in the camps.”

With a glance to Bulkhead, who had remained silent until then while he darted his attention back and forth from one speaker to the next, Ultra Magnus decided to address the leader of the work detail. “How have the workers been getting along?”

Attention on the large green mech never seemed to sit right with said mech and Bulkhead flinched. But he stood a little straighter and spoke up clearly after a shrug of his shoulders. “For the most part it goes well. The old Con troops are a quiet bunch; work real hard and follow orders. They really know what they are doing, and none of the Vehicons have shown a problem working with any Autobots… as long as a Bot doesn’t try and hassle them. I’ve got more issues with angry Autobots starting trouble for the former Cons.”

“Have you tried keeping them separate?” Ratchet eyed the big green wrecker without malice.

“Well, yeah. It works for the most part, but sometimes the groups gotta work together to get something done. There are somethings the Cons know that the Bots don’t, and vice versa. It really slows us down.”

After a huffed vent, Bulkhead continued along the stream with, “Well, ya can’t blame Autobots for not wanting to work with Decepticons. How many have had to fight ole Buckethead’s minions to stay online? How many of us have lost our buddies because of them?”

It was a point that no one could argue. But that did not mean that no one had anything to say. “Well, we’re all going to eventually have to stop fighting one another. I mean the war is over. We’ll start right back up if we don’t all learn to deal.”

Smokescreen’s words had a youthful wisdom to them, and Magnus could not help but feel it had some of Prime’s influence to them. All around they glanced to each other, at least all but the speaker. In their glances they quietly shared what the Commander had been thinking — that there was a bit of Prime in those words.

“What’d I say?” Smokescreen saw the glances but obviously could not see what they had seen.’

The silence that followed that was broken by Wheeljack’ taciturn explanation: “'Til all are one, kid.”

“ _Oh_.”

Ratchet met with Magnus’ eyes, and they let the words hang between them for a while neither was willing to break the painful silence that followed the more painful reminder.

Eventually it had to be broken, and Arcee did so with a respectful grace. “Ultimately, I think the biggest problem is there is no clear leader for everyone: civilians and soldiers, Autobot and Decepticons, or those who wish to live in the old Cybertron or want to make a new one.” To him she looked, and muttered an apology, “Sir.”

Even to follow the offense he was supposed to take, Ultra Magnus just narrowed his optics on the congregation of Autobots and considered all the problems that weighed. He looked to Arcee and with a nod concurred. “Agreed.” Now it was the struggle to decide what to do. For now, all they could do was cope the best of their abilities and that was exactly what the Autobots had been doing. “Carry on.”

* * *

Into the second, third, and into the twentieth megacycle waited Megatron. His patience came from a sheer force of will, for by the third sol cycle his actuators had begun to groan loudly, the hydraulic systems struggled to flood from keeping the same position, and Megatron was at a loss of patience as his knees threatened to buckle. Energon reserves had been stretched thin, even though he had barely any in his tanks before his descent into Cybertron’s depths. He even fought power-down mode to standby and keep his vigilance. It was his sense of pride and purpose that kept him still, as he watched the core.

A voice came at the end of the long silence — which would prove to only be the first of many. This voice was one that boomed as a whisper, sounded like a choir of billions in the same harmony as one, and had the distinction of being something Megatron would have called unfathomable had it not been processed by his own audios.

It asked so plainly, “Why?”

For three days Megatron waited for a reply, and all he was given was a simple question thrown back at him. A roar nearly erupted from him but all that he indulged in was a sneer across his jagged denta.

“Cybertron has entered a transitional period, one between war and peace. The war has barely concluded, the refugees once scattered are slowly returning, but there is no direction. Yes, the great cities will be rebuilt, but it will all come toppling down without a leader. The people are directionless. Members from both factions are trying to assert their dominance, old politicians are trying to reclaim their power, and remnants from the caste system are slowly being resurrected. Everyone is trying to carve out their own piece of the planet while they can,” Megatron began his explanation.

With a deep intake he tried to find his precious patience, what little of it remained. It would not be prudent to waste this opportunity on impatience; if the former Disciple of Primus was anything to go by, Megatron could only estimate the patience the god had available.

As the voice remained silent he swayed, his tactical processes tracking each minute movement of the core’s eye. When it began to dim as if to retreat, an incredulous panic surged Megatron to continue.

“The war began because of corruption within the leadership, and a useless mech that called himself Prime. That corruption has begun to seep into the planet, Primus. The people need the guidance of a _real_ Prime,” he said with no brokerage of doubt.

“War will begin if a new leader does not come forward, one who has seen this happen before, one that would see that it never happens again. The people need their Prime, God,” hissed the old tyrant, all save the last statement which then rose into a demand.

This time the reply was immediate. “My vessel is emptied.”

How short-sighted gods must be, so thought Megatron as he shifted one pede forward and clenched clawed servo upwards towards the light. He held it there, then opened it to expose his energon-stained palm.

“Are you not a god? One that made a race of living machines? The universe favors the chaos of the organics; how mighty must you have been to make us, in your image,” he started, with a tone that boomed across the chamber walls; a gladiator still spoke.

Megatron relaxed once more, and gestured towards the dead chassis the same way he might to a child’s puzzle. “Return your essence to the _Matrix of Leadership_ and I will see to it the wisdom from Vector Sigma is uploaded,” with a grand gesture to his spark and a smirk on his plates, he spoke as if it was obvious enough.

 _Perhaps in the dead of slumber Primus had become addled and forgotten he had the power of a god_ , thought Megatron. _This was why it was better to slay them than be subjugated to their whims_ , he thought without a shutter of his optics.

He stopped the thought, and remembered how it had led him down the path of dismissing not just Primus the god, but the planet the god was the core of. Megatron lowered his helm briefly to show humility; it was the only apology the creator would get then.

The eye expanded the fall of light and focused it on him. So bright was the sight that Megatron had to shield his optics as they adjusted, and waited for the intensity to simmer down.

“Do you come forward to be Prime?” It asked, and Megatron already could detect the sarcasm.

What was worse was not the irony, but the spark-stabbing implication of Primus. Megatron had once presumed himself to be worthy of Prime, and when it was his little archivist friend that had been risen up instead, Megatron’s wrath became unholy.

Torment coiled around him, a cold and painful vise that hurt with a sensation foreign to him; guilt, epic and soul-shattering guilt. It was disgusting. Megatron had no intention of being consumed by something as petty as guilt, not even if he did nothing to put an end to it.

He was a mech of action and solution. He would do what he must to end that wretched sensation that weighed his thoughts down.

“No,” Megatron spat. His most basic instinct longed to claim power again, to take what he wanted and to prevent any other from having the strength or position to oppress him again. To admit aloud that he no longer wanted, to a god that looked to judge him, was painful and went against his basic personality matrix.

“I do not want power, God, at least not that power. I am not a civil leader, but an old war general. I do not want to see Cybertron a planet of corruption again, where younglings crawl from the _Well_ and are placed under the pedes of oppressors. I thought I knew oppression once before, as I turned my optics raw and watched kin perish in energon-fueled fires under the mines. Then Unicron, the Chaos Bringer, showed me that before it was just my frame that had been subjugated; he took my mind and made me a prisoner in it,” he said with a small measure of reluctant humility.

Not quite finished his answer, Megatron took a brief pause to consider the arguments he once held with Orion so long ago. When the words came, he finally continued to explain, “I knew of castes that sat in luxury compared to my life, but their lives were determined and their thoughts limited and controlled. The agony may not be comprehensible to what Unicron forced me to endure through his possession, but untold scores of Cybertronians were told what to think and whether they are allowed to at all… I had a friend, once, who suffered under that.”

“The threat of oppression’s return is very real, Primus. This is the matter of a civil leader, not a warrior. I would rather see your core cold and gray as Optimus Prime’s frame and our people scattered across the universe, than to see that tyranny of the corrupt return to power again." With the implication of his ineligibility to lead left unsaid, Megatron spent the last of his words and stared into the core.

A swell of visual song coiled against his field, and for the first time Megatron felt he was truly being heard by the creator.

“I would vow my loyalty and my life to the Prime, penance for my crimes if only to see a _true_ leader’s return,” he stopped and gestured at the rusting frame of the last Prime.

“Since I saw the reconstructed frame of Optimus Prime in the dawn’s light of Earth’s sun, I knew he had been remade into a real weapon of war. It was an escalation to match my determination to win the war, to put a stop to my glorious tyranny,” he said with glossa pressed into his cheek.

Servos fell back to his side and he curled the claws inward. “But Cybertron does not need a _Prime of War_ ; our people need a _Prime of Peace_. I have never known a more capable leader than my great nemesis, who was denied his service in times of peace.  **I petition for the return of Optimus Prime**.”

The command bellowed out into the core’s walls and into the antechamber at the base of the _Well_. The flicker of lights compromising the _AllSpark_ began to get over excited, like a mass of firelights in summer; Megatron briefly held flashes of that wretched little planet’s weather, even if it made flight far more interesting.

One of the lights zoomed past him, with a speed that even Starscream could not have matched. It whizzed by and touched upon the furled edge of his shoulder guard; the light was warm unlike anything else, not hot, merely a warmth that seeped into all extremities of Megatron’s cold frame.

Into the eye of the core it disappeared, swallowed up by a brightness greater than its own.

“The one you call Optimus… is happy where he is,” Primus said aloud.

With a huff of his vents, Megatron murmured beneath the hum of his field, “Of course he would.”

Aloud he countered, “However, that does not mean he would remain in his place if he knew what happened on Cybertron. He was my greatest adversary; I can say with confidence that if he knew the civil unrest and threat to the peace already in formation, Optimus would crawl into the pits to protect this fragile reformation peace.”

“He has grown tired of war,” Primus stated.

Again, Megatron thought on the promise of war he spoke not. This time it was not of his doing, but a venture he was actively attempting to counter by this desperate means.

“I will protect him from it, if his leadership of the civilian population falls short and a war-time leader is required. No one else could take on the challenge of war than an old warlord, hmm, God?”

The eye of the core stopped to stare at him, with an intensity that bore into Megatron once more. Around him a glittering kaleidoscope emanated from the distant _AllSpark_ to his back. There was a distinct new sound that stood out from the others, like an additional voice that stepped forward to be heard. Only, this melodic tone came not from the ether of the _AllSpark_ , but came forth from the core. It was alien from what Megatron had heard before, solitary and felt so much smaller. It was like wind chimes in a breeze. When the small sound became quiet, the core looked away from Megatron as it had before, when he first spoke.

He could tell the discussion was far from over, and a new wait had just begun. This time, Megatron lowered his frame onto the floor and sat in a position unbecoming of the former Lord of the Decepticons.

The wait soon began to extend far beyond another few cycles, and the passage of time became blurred once Megatron hid the visual display of his chronometer; he did not want to know exactly how long he had waited. The rise and fall of sunlight was absent from the chambers down in the core's depths, and after a while his systems began to power down from a lack of energy.

At these depths of the planetary core, Megatron began to feel dry and parched, deprived of what little refined energon he kept at the caves. With frustration Megatron mentally noted that there should he a new batch of processed fuel awaiting for him upon his return.

If he ever returned. He began to dryly think that perhaps his systems would finally give in to energon depredation, something he had already struggled with back in the homely wilds of his cave network. He had hardly dived into the _Well_ with enough reserves to keep a minicon active. It was time to allow his systems to power-down and reserve what little innermost energon he had to sustain him for the long discussion ahead, and the journey back to his cave.

With his audio sensors keyed to activate at the first sign of feedback, Megatron allowed his primary processor core to go in stand-by.

He dreamt in visions broken, tattered, jagged and harsh. They spoke with Unicron’s voice, and conjured up the ghostly pains inflicted on him by the Chaos Bringer. What was more, he saw the flames of the pits lick at his pedes, reach up with smoldering metal to drag him in. He tried to fly, but his wings were torn off. They changed into the chained linked tracks of his old tank mode, but there was no ground to tread on.

When the superheated metal finally caught him and dragged him under, he stayed plunged into a darkness. For a long time it was dark, colder than the vacuum of space and felt longer than his solitary journey through space in search of a means of defeating the only foe that ever truly mattered, and to his mind it was a greater devastation than the horrors of the pits.

A spark-eater found him in the darkness, though it withered because he had no spark.

A Terrorcon starved because his energon veins were filled with rust.

The darkness remained, a deep morass that kept the predators sheathed in a shadow that would not yield. However, he knew they were there, his senses could make out their horrific forms.

Just when the darkness threatened to eat all his dreamed reality and his unconscious sanity, a silver light began to grow in the distance. It spoke to him, in a sweet baritone timber that he could vaguely remember; the name escaped him, just as the light did if he moved to touch it.

All too soon the voice disappeared, as if a specter of the ether.

Systems began to function once more: activation triggered by the registered sounds processed within his audio-tracking programs. He came online not with a jolt, but a steady warm-up of his systems. As the systems returned to full function, Megatron finally dared to see what his chronometer would report.

One-slagging sol short of an orn; Megatron internally wished damnation on all the gods he had and shall ever cross paths with. He may be nearly indestructible, long-lived, and a titan among his people, but even he had an expiration date!

The voice of the god had been registered, and seemed neither eager nor aloof to catch his attention; Primus was difficult to read, mostly being a massive sparkchamber that sat at the core of Cybertron.

"Megatron," he heard, and sat up-right when summoned. Soon he was on his pedes, and internally pondered that his designated had finally been acknowledged by the creator-deity.

"Yes, Lord of Light?" The titular sobriquet felt too sweet on Megatron’s glossa, like high-grade from Iacon — thick and syrupy. He marked it with a dramatic bow at waist and drop of helm.

With no hesitation, not even a marked flare of the massive spark, he was informed, “Your petition will be granted.”

Stolen glances caught the eye's great gaze, as if Megatron dared to catch the god playing a joke on him. With no sign of rescission, the boastful warlord bowed his frame further until he rested on a guarded knee.

"My sincerest gratitude," he managed to say with his best impersonation of thanks; defiance contorted his facial plates into a sneer, which were thusly kept hidden by the angle of his bent neck.

Although not one to play prostate to the whims of gods, their powers and mercurial rationale made it wisest to show gratitude when granted the petty wishes of mortals.

Megatron was so sick of gods. He planned to take his prize and get out of this place. He rose to his height and stole a glance at the decayed form of the last Prime.

"With terms."

His helm whipped around and this time he let the god see his shocked grimace of displeasure. Of course there would be, because no good deed would ever go unpunished.

Never one to back down, Megatron expanded his chassis with a deep intake, and released heated air out his ventral ducts.

"What are--" before his query could be finished, Megatron was interrupted by an unlikely source.

A small ethereal light, identical to the one before, shot out from the core's iris. It shot through the air along a direct path back to the _AllSpark_ , one that intersected with Megatron. The specter passed through him, seeming to pass as though he were a sparkghost. As it transacted his frame it seemed to brush against his spark, or so Megatron imagined as he was suddenly overwhelmed with a sensation of a warm presence, kind, gentle, and comprised of purity as might of light; it was as familiar as it was bright.

It passed through in a milliklik, barely enough length for his chronometer to mark passage. He turned his frame with a thunderous step and watched it dart back into the AllSpark.

"What is happening?" An explanation was demanded, and Megatron watched as the luminescent flame began to do more than merely twinkle and wink at him.

The eye was watching in the distance, and Megatron took after the trail of light.

In the antechamber at the base of the _Well_ , the _AllSpark_ pulsed, contracted, expanded as if in great pains. The contractions came in intervals, first steady and far apart, until it began to decrease the intervals. During the time, the antechamber was filled with an otherworldly choir that crescendoed upwards to a cacophonous volume. With one last convulsion, the size expanded, the luminosity became a flash to blind, and Megatron could make out shapes that moved and writhed in the mass.

It contracted at last and the chorus died down to whispers. The ether calmed down, spent and exhausted.

Even through the mass of light, now dimmer and lazy in movement, Megatron could make out a small form.

It was a figure standing in the apex, and as stock-still as it remained, Megatron narrowed his gaze to try and detect the finer details. At last it registered the lag of his processors, and Megatron made an assumption of what he was seeing.

Whatever it was, whether he was correct or not, it moved forward out of the _Well_ 's vortex.

Twin blue pinpoints of light precipitated the breech, and out came a medium-build frame. It was plain, humble, absent of any uniquely remarkable details to note, aside from the sheen of freshly formed metal. However, Megatron knew the features of that design even with any color schema: Orion Pax, the humble librarian from Iacon.

As it walked towards him, Megatron peered down at the smaller form, barely tall enough to reach his waist. There was no blue or red, but there was a newness that filled his sensor feeds. Orion looked upwards at him with a curiously blank expression. A harmonic resonance rose out of the newform, one that Megatron instinctively knew to be the sound of a newspark.

To the god he looked upon, filled with wrath and rage that overflowed out of him with ferocity.

“I ask for a Prime and you send me a Newspark. Tell me, _God_ , what am I to do with it?” His question was incredulous, sharp and demanding to be explained. Rather than saying a proper name, Megatron spat out the pronoun as if Orion was a mere inanimate object, and mostly an unwanted one.

Primus answered, his lyrical words and good-humored message aimed at Megatron's folly, “You will care for _It_.” To the god, it was obvious.

“I know nothing of the care for a newspark.”

This time it was not just the voice that sounded humored, but the core vibrated the chamber with what could be construed as laughter at Megatron's expense.

He hoped there was a special pit for gods, and the time spent on his spiteful prayers was enough for Primus to speak before he had his chance.

“Then you shall learn, _Protector_ ,” he said, with a special emphasis on the word protector, as if it was a new pseudonym assigned.

“There is no stronger drive to preserve from harm than that of a Guardian,” Primus added. The iris stared into him, and once Megatron felt the light seep through his plating and thought perhaps the creator god did look into his spark.

“This is the penance you seek.”

Denta flared into the ray of light, for Megatron spat back a retort that he sought no penance.

Ignoring him, Primus continued on with his task for Megatron, “You will be his guardian and he will have no higher protector. You will do as if he is the people you claim need him thus.”

“Again, God, the people of Cybertron do not need a newspark; they need a Prime! Return to me Optimus Prime with his frame, his mind, and his spark!” The outcry of his demand rang out against the chamber walls; Megatron had not heard as much as many sounds in so long until this audience with Primus.

“You must learn to protect that which is most precious: the innocent and the weak. Only if you do this will he become what he once was and what you swore loyalty to.”

Innocent and weak? They were the very things Megatron loathed and forsook, ridiculed the soldiers under his command for daring to be so, and damned the Autobots for being thus.

"And when will he become what they need him to be? When will he be Optimus Prime? Will he know anything of his last life? How long will this take? You have have all of eternity, but our people do not."

So many questions; questions of dismay, frustration, and a sliver of panic. Megatron thought back at the place he dwelt, knowing it was hardly habitable for him, let alone a defenseless newspark.

This was not what he asked for, nor what he wanted. Megatron began to realize his folly to ask a god for anything, even one said to be benevolent as Primus; he should have let Cybertron rot to pieces and stayed in the tunnel mines.

"Optimus Prime is still there, and he will re-emerge when Orion Pax is ready, and he will depend on you to get to that place. For as long as it takes, I foresee it will happen in due time. When that time comes, he will become as he once was. However, only if he survives, which depends on you," Primus spoke as if Megatron was the newspark, foolish and innocently ignorant and needed his servo held; comparatively, Megatron was a newspark, and embodied the traits.

“Guard and Protect him, Megatron. These are the terms.”

Megatron knew he had no room to negotiate. That did not mean he was not going to try, not while his accursed spark still beat. Up rang his voice in defiance, ”I did not come to be tested, Primus! Would you dare risk the fate of _your_ people on my metal?"

The eye turned from the newspark and back on Megatron with an intensity that bordered on some sort of divine wrath; at least even the all-caring god of light was not immune anger, although Megatron also knew he could just be projecting.

He didn't care.

Primus spoke aloud and in his mind, "I do not test you, Megatron. To test you would imply that I care neither if you succeed or if you fail. This is a lesson to teach you; to change you into what you need to be, into what Cybertron needs you to be, and what He needs you to be. Not all lessons are taught from the pains of past mistakes; some come from the hard-earned successes in the coming future. You will fail or succeed, all dependent on what you make of this lesson."

For all appearances, Primus pulled back into the core and began to rotate away; tired and languid, on the precipice of some godly respite.

Even as the voice and light receded into dimness, Primus sagely gave to the new guardian a hint. "He looks to you for everything."

Megatron looked down at the face of the newspark and saw nothing but an expression empty of understanding. He saw nothing reflected back in the light.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now Megatron has begun to deal with what Primus gave him -- STILL NOT WHAT HE ASKED FOR.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orion is not going to remain a "new spark" like mind for very long. There will be a couple more chapters and then it will be quite implicit that he's finished his brain module's development. This story will not turn E for Explicit until after that is complete.
> 
> Also, keep in mind that in my fiction, there are no parent-child relationships, there is no family dynamic from our understanding. They are aliens who had to have family explained to them.
> 
> For those who steadfast believe that Megatron would never doubt himself: I'm sorry, I don't believe that. Particularly after what he went through with Unicron, he is going to doubt himself. That doubt is doubly there because now Primus has saddled him with something Megatron doesn't want, nor does he feel he is suited to do. Optimus Prime has big pedes for little Orion to fill, and someone's told Megatron _has_ has to make it happen. However, he also falls back on what he knows. So, welcome to the world of contradictory miner thoughts paired with prideful retired warlord.
> 
> Beta: Merk & Andromeda_Prime

The god had fallen into silence just as the light dimmed and faded into a slumbering state. Megatron felt rather alone save for the corpse behind him and the newspark beside him.

He turned to look at Orion, whom he felt sickened to think of thus, so ‘It’ would just have to do, who didn't so much as act like the mech of his designation. It was quiet, blank of expression and just stared at either him or the twinkling lights emanating from the AllSpark; It was waiting for something.

With a glance around, Megatron realized that he would have to travel through the Underworld to return to the surface, as he could not transport the newspark in his vehicle mode.

He left the newspark where It stood and began to explore the cavernous chamber for a way to leave on pede. Several entry ways were found, though most looked too treacherous for the pathetic little youngling, so he continued until an adequate tunnel was found that quickly expanded to a comfortable cavern.

Retraced steps returned Megatron to where the newspark was, where It remained exactly as It had been left. Bright blue optics stared at him blankly, even through his declarative command, "Well, we need to move out."

It did nothing.

He took a step back to indicate a direction, and It did not move at all. “Get moving!”

It did not react, only watched him further with small twitches to the audio fins and a rotational cycle of the optical mechanisms; once upon a time, those tessellated optics shared so much of a reserved mech, and now they looked hollow and lifeless as the corpse if not for that blue that shone.

"You are defective?" Megatron's question came with doubt, for the AllSpark was not known to make flaws without a reason, and this bot had been sparked with no small importance. Thus, he moved and came to stand before It, stared into the hollow light that peered back at him with so very few signs of depth. Long silence passed where he searched for any signs of the archivists he once knew, and with frustration he found emptiness.

He let out a hum that rumbled in his chassis, and took to deep contemplation as to figure out what to do. His memories of being newly sparked were nearly nonexistent, though he did have a vague recollection of his brief wait at the top of the Well, where he had been processed for assignment to a caste.

Then memory surfaced and Megatron remembered: newsparks had no verbal language files at first emergence, only a basic ability to communicate with binary code. “Well, Orion, it seems you must learn to talk.”

A reluctant as he was, Megatron opened a gap between his central costal plates, and exposed two small cables. Although most Cybertronians were shy and modest about exposing their built-in data cables, Megatron felt no compunction, particularly when it would solve a problem.

One cable was unspooled and the head held in a claw. He huffed at the tiny figure and walked around, looking for the necessary access point.

Located in the seam under the occipital plate, Megatron had to get the newspark to lean its helm forward and expose a small port tucked under fibrous tubing. Without the necessary tools, Megatron had to be careful not to inflict damage as he parted the sinewy wires and cables. As laborious as the task could be for someone with claws as monstrous as his, Megatron still managed to skillfully execute it.

Anyone else would have warned the little one that the first bite of the cable-head’s teeth would hurt, but Megatron did not bother. It would not understand, and even if it did mind he would have still continued.

It did have a bite, and though it was his cable’s teeth that dug in, even Megatron’s registered the harshness of the established connection. Immediately his HUD began to feed a basic read-out of the newspark’s vital reports. There was not even a security prompt; rather, the system opened up to him without question.

All systems were as fresh as the unfinished metal; heating and cooling sub-systems functioned at peak capacity, hydraulics were fresh with fluid, oil had not even a hint of burn, and the neuralnet was reported that all the cores were in sync. He pushed through to examine the current state of the internal programs, particularly the state of the operating system and the newspark’s limited memory files.

As he explored in an effort to familiarize himself with this mess he had been saddled with, Megatron created an internal kernel to compile and compress an executable command containing the sum total of his entire language database, barely choosing at the last milliklik to delete several of the more unsavory words and proper nouns gathered through his personal experiences; names, places, battles, and particular objects.

It was only the most necessary language for the newspark to function as more than a glorified drone, and similar to the same executable language database Megatron had once received. As the youngling’s mind expanded with experience, so would the comprehension of the words given grow with that experience, new words and meanings contributed with various contexts.

The newspark's built-in linguistic dynamic database, located in the communications cortex, dictated the mech's capacity to grow and adapt to new forms of communication. It was different from Megatron's in several key areas. This one was expansive in comparison, like an open sink hole that had a capacity and eagerness to consume everything exposed to it. As he began to uplink the data, the construct began to grow hungrier with every new entry, and devoured the data with a ravenous appetite.

No wonder Orion had the capacity to learn at such a rapid rate. If the rest of his neuralnet was anything like his communications cortex, then the archivist was built primarily for one thing: to gather and process, to sort and file, to categorize and to harmonize, to cross-link and to verify. It learned.

They were from the same Well, made of similar metals and lubricants, but their programming was inherently very different.

The uplink continued and Megatron explored onward. He pushed further into the basic neural structure, towards the outer reaches of Orion’s mind, and eventually came upon his auxiliary memory core. Typically the compartment was reserved for the most essential of memories, that which could not be afforded to be lost if a critical failure came over the rest of the neuralnet, and was readily shut-off in the event of a systemic cascade of errors.

Megatron’s exploration came to a sudden stop that triggered a shock to his cable. He was punished for touching something: a barrier.

Not one to be denied, Megatron continued to push forward, though slower and more cautious of the barrier. When he found its edge, he grazed his mind along it with just a touch of his intrusive code. Such a light contact was enough to trigger a small discharge from the obstruction, and the effects zinged across his mind like static.

It was a firewall. The sort that Soundwave would have used on anything Megatron wanted kept out of all other servos or reaches. The encryption was deviously comprised of an extrapolative cipher in the millions of billions of combination variables, using glyphs that even Megatron could not recognize. The density of the code was far beyond anything he had ever seen, and somehow he wondered if even a cortical psychic patch and Soundwave’s expertise could get him through it.

The violence it shared at the barest hint of connection made Megatron suspect that too much prodding could get his neuralnet fried. So, he went around the impenetrable barrier. The space it took up was large and considerable, even with the opaque volume of unattainable data. He could only imagine what was behind there, what was denied to him; however he decided to leave for another time.

The transfer completed and registered back on his HUD as the patient code came to an end.

With a harsh yank he pulled the plug.

The newspark let out a grunt of pain, and raised a servo to touch the back of the neck. The wires had already slipped to cover the port, and Megatron came to stand in front of It again.

As noted by Megatron, It registered stimuli with a basic verbal cue.

“Processor-plugging is typically not very pleasant at first contact, particularly for virgin ports. It is the teeth that inflict the sting. If the same individual plugs in repeatedly, then the pain will ease,” Megatron explained with a huff of his vents.

The optics turned to look at him, even as the plain servos continued to rub at the base of its helm.

“I see,” stated It.

That voice was a voice Megatron knew as well as he knew his own. His back-struts went stock-stiff and he stared at the youngling; already it seemed older than just moments earlier.

“Designation?”

Megatron stared downward onto the form, and finally tried to accept that the newspark was no longer It. He growled low, and gestured with a claw towards his spark. “I am Megatron, and you are Orion Pax.” How often would they have to introduce themselves? Was he destined to cycle through their painful beginning, only to watch the terrible end begin again?.

“Orion Pax,” stated his young charge, who was busy trying to shape the syllables through his vocoder and on his glossa.

Megatron watched as the youngling continued to think, most likely still processing through the database recently uploaded. Rather than wait, he began to take a step back towards the discovered exit.

“My fuel reserves are below the recommended minimal levels. At current rate of consumption, I will be forced into power-down in approximately 4.5 megacycles. I require sustenance,” Orion said, his tone tender and inviting, despite the technical manner of his speech.

Right now, Megatron knew that Orion was barely expending any energy at all, and their long journey would require far more output than basic power consumption. They had a long way to go, and the underworld was no easy passage. And if Megatron was honest, he knew he himself required something before they entered the underworld.

Without the option of a flight out of the Well to retrieve energon, which would require he left the youngling behind, Megatron looked around for another option that would not require him to leave Orion unattended and alone. He had no idea what trouble Pax would get into with Megatron gone, and he distinctly remembered how good the older archivist had been at finding trouble.

In the field of sight an option came, not one he would have wanted to explore at this venture; the sight of Optimus Prime’s hollowed frame.

“Go to the other side of the chamber, behind the core, and wait there. Sit, do not move,” he so ordered.

Before Megatron made to move, he stood still with his hulking weight shifted to one pede, and watched Orion do as he was told. All he received was a questioning glance, then obedience followed.

"Oh, and now you listen to me, librarian," he said to the back of the retreating youngling. Orion in the past had not always been the most compliant, graced with stubbornness and a willful spark to go along with his gentle pacifism.

If Orion continued to obey him then at least the youngling wouldn't die so quickly under his care, he mused. Engines growled at the thought of death again.

With Orion out of sight, Megatron turned to look at the abandoned body.

Most of the paint had peeled off, though Megatron would have more suspected that somehow Prime’s frame would have been preserved in the chamber, rather than decay at this alarming rate. The surface metal was blighted with rust, the paint that remained still was faded and dull, and everything had a sick gray film.

“You’re an empty husk, so you get no apology from me. This is survival.”

Megatron sank his claws between the abdominal armor-plates; it gave way too easy or his strength was just too much. The sound of metal being torn was sickening and it was sweet, a familiarity he had from the brutality harbored in the arena and on the battlefield. He rummaged through wires, circuits, fuel-lines, delicate protomesh and sensor netting, until he located his target: Prime’s fuel reserves. 

In a few kliks the two tanks were pulled from the remains, and Megatron’s carrion dissection had been completed. Megatron didn't stop to consider the new stains on his servos, which stank of stale oil and clotted lubricants, or half-burnt energon; it was all just death, petty silly death. Mindful to seal the fuel flap closed and preserve the filter, he poured until one tank had a smaller quantity for Orion, and bound the pair together with pulled wires.

He had energon to share for them both, and hopefully enough refined fuel to get them through their journey.

“Next time, it is sufficient to say that you need energon -- that is what this is,” Megatron said as he tossed one of the tanks onto the ground and let it slide towards Orion.

The youngling looked at the tank, and obviously did not recognize the component it was made from.

As Megatron arranged his frame on the ground, in Orion’s near proximity, he began to open the mouth of the fuel tank and bring it to his intakes. He watched over the rim as Orion mimicked him. The would-be archivist was careful not to spill a drop, or even touch the rim too readily. In comparison to the improvised canteen, Orion was so clean and pure still.

Megatron could remember the struggle his Iaconian guest had had to maintain a basic level of cleanliness while in Kaon. He dared to wonder if Orion would be so fastidious this time.

Time passed between them and it was quiet, until Orion softly split it to say, "I know what energon is." He must have had his fill for he carefully replaced the seal on the tank and sat with it between his legs.

Megatron sneered openly, despite the fact that Orion did not even bother to look phased; some things seemed to never change.

What was left in his ration of the reclaimed energon was consumed swiftly and in the common silence. 

Orion's unfinished tank was a temptation to Megatron, who had stray thoughts to snatch it away if the little pissant wouldn't finish the quarter-full container. But for now at least the youngling could carry the reserves on the off chance that his tanks were just too small to adequately cover the distance ahead. Even with his extensive knowledge of Cybertron's subterranean geography, afforded to him as a former miner, Megatron had no clear knowledge of how far into or across the Underworld they would have to traverse. It might be best for now if the remnants were kept available for whichever party would need it first.

Fragged-out gods and their net-fried lessons; Megatron did not know how to be as nurturing as a guardianship entailed, he only knew what was practical.

So, he took the repurposed wire and tied it across Orion's chassis, which then ran across from one shoulder to the opposite hip. “We must get going,” he announced with a rise of his hefty body without a passing glance at Orion, and with the expectation that he would follow.

His expectations were met, and Orion found his place in Megatron’s shadow.

Through the tunnel a tunnel of darkness, illuminated by a fluorescent biolight of Cybertron’s anatomy, Megatron went to lead the youngling.

* * *

Rain came down in lazy droplets, each blended in with the next until any separation had been lost. Keen audials listened to the sound, for there was nothing else to listen to than the pellets of liquid that befell the region. Starscream listened as if he heard silent chamber music, and with the hatred of someone who craved a symphony. In the beat of the drops he heard melody; the chords and chorus were long since dredged up memories of long ago, when Vos was alive with the song of Seekers. For all Starscream knew he was still the only Seeker left on all of Cybertron — save for that Knock Out who had forsaken his wings for a flashy finish and chrome details.

While Starscream would have contemplated surrendering his wings if it meant some real company, such a contemplation would never have come to pass with an agreement; the faint promise of flight was a freedom to somewhere else, but his loneliness was destructively all-consuming. Even the company of those beasts would have been preferable to nothing but the dull rain. Since the revival of Cybertron their weather was milder than before the war, and the once-regal Seeker lamented that loss; Earth at least had interesting weather. One atmospheric change was one he could not begrudge: the rain over Kaon was a lot less acidic. So, at least he did not sit alone, in this ridiculously tragic cage the beasts saw fit to stuff in him.

Hung on a chain caked with rust, sat Cybertron’s most prideful Seeker in a thin layer of his own filth at the bottom of a small aviary coop; he had been turned into some twisted version of a pet. Oh what a tragic comedy his existence had become.

As Starscream sat in the loneliness, his internal dialogue became external as he acted out his role as the tragic princely damsel. In this rendition of _The Life of Starscream_ he was not so entirely alone, for fate would have it that he could imagine the quiet company of shadow-zoned Soundwave. Of course, even his imaginary friends were superior to everyone else. Now it made perfect sense that his silent companion never responded, and all he would have is the hypothetical responses he had dealt with during the height and fall of the Decepticons.

“Yes, of course, Lord Megatron will come rescue us. He will remember our importance—” He glanced to an empty corner of the cage, “He wasn't really standing down our arms against the Autobots! He indubitably intends to get the Autobots to lower their guards and then we destroy them!” From him came words of blind worship, but his face was contorted in a sort of disgust. Under his vents so that _‘Soundwave’_ would not hear, he muttered lowly that Megatron was still a fool for allowing Unicron to taint his spark so.

What a dreary existence he suffered, for even friends of fantasy chose to cleave unto him their silence. For as he acrimoniously longed for even Soundwave’s muted company, Starscream would not chase away the apparition; it was all he had, anymore.

Even then, with all the misery Starscream sat in, each layer thicker than the grime caked on his finish, he still had not completely surrendered the elements of his personality that had at one time brought him to many a seat of power. While the Predacons lollygagged about, the former Commander of the Decepticons also watched and waited to write-script his plots.

In equal parts, the spirit and behavior of these beasts amused and disgusted Starscream. Rarely was he informed with the intentions behind their doings, and he honestly doubted that they had any at all. Predaking was obviously still the leader of the two dimwits, but even with all the nobility he had acquired, all he was a _king of beasts_.

In all, the beasts were poor company and rare to grant it after they had had their fill of vengeful beatings. Now he was a neglected pet, caged and occasionally asked to sing.

He’d much rather pose riddles, but they were not quite cerebral for that. Soundwave, however, had always been an excellent riddler.

“Oh, here is one for you: What is as big as a Predacon, looks like a Predacon, but weighs nothing at all?” Starscream’s voice lilted with self-satisfaction, and his face was twisted as such.

Nothing came; not even the rain was as loud as before and the silence felt a vacuum.

“Wrong!” Starsceam gleefully retorted to fill the void. With a chuckle he waggled a talon at the empty corner jocosely scolding the emptiness. “A Predacon’s—well, it also covers their intelligence, but the answer is: a Predacon’s shadow!”

Far and away, between the words of his riddles, Starscream began to pick up the voices of at least one captor.

Through the vaulted double doors barged in Starscream’s favorite of the brutes: Darksteel, a beast with less wit than humor, just like Knock Out’s foolhardy and paranoid assistant, Breakdown: Come to think of it, the more he stared at the idiot’s face the more he resembled the spider-snack.

“—hehehe— don’t get so bent. _It was funny_.” Darksteel even had a semblance of the idiot when he spoke. 

From the illusory safety of his cage, Starscream watched the seeds of dissent with great interest. One of the rare treasures he had to enjoy during the course of being the kept-pet of Predaking, had been to watch the other two beasts bicker with one another. “Oh, where is Tweedledee?” he asked dryly, unlike the cage he sat in.

Skylynx stormed in on the heels of his brother, covered in another thin layer of engine oil and rust dust; Starscream assumed this was a product of Darksteel’s idea of funny, which it was.

“Oh, there he is.” Despite Starscream’s best hatred for the two, his wings still fluttered to extremes in excitement over the primitive company.

“I thought I was Tweedledee?” Darksteel managed to look more disappointed than confused.

While Skylynx scowled at their interaction, Starscream looked at his favored Predacon, “Oh, no, you are his far more handsome brother.” Darksteel looked twice as pleased with himself; the idiot had no idea, as usual. For amusement or some sort barbaric sense of camaraderie, the two began to exchange a variety of blows that had no intention to inflict real damage. Their bickering words were unintelligible to an intellect the likes of which Starscream was blessed with, but he knew that it heralded forgiveness of Darksteel’s simple-minded sense of humor.

Out onto the ledge the two Predacons went, to expose the filthier beast to the weather and crudely cleanse away the prank’s filthy by-product. From his cage Starscream watched them with interested loathing. His cerebral processors swam with all sorts of possible ways to continue pulling at the strings he began to weave around the beasts. He was determined to be freed, and for now his best option laid with those idiots.

Across the open room he spoke up between a bought of their blows, “Have you thought about what we spoke of last?” Starscream pressed his thin faceplates between the bars, and twined his thinner talons around the metal.

Darksteel’s interest was laid exposed, but it was Skylynx that approached Starscream first. Before he would speak he raised a claw and jabbed it into the Seeker’s face and forced him to retreat from the bar’s proximity. “Why would we want more of our kind? What is your ulterior motive?”

_‘Like I would just tell you my motives,’_ thought Starscream. But, he was beset once more with a wicked sense of self-pleasure at signs that neither one denied such a desire, and only made known a suspicion that he knew was more accurate — not that he did not want to dissuade it into trust. To the best of his abilities —and he felt they were considerable— Starscream feigned innocence with a jolly flutter of his wings. “What ulterior motive could I possibly have? _Have I not proven where my new loyalties lie?_ Tell me, was the stockpile of energon not where I left it?”

A face far too much like Dreadwing's glowered at him with barely contained disgust, but it was Darksteel that joined the conversation by ways of answering, “It was! Predaking was so pleased when we found it!” Whatever joy he had was cut short when Skylynx slammed a sharp elbow into thoracic plating, effectively knocking him back.

“Shut your intakes!”

The laughter was obnoxious, and still a thrill came through Starscream that ran up and down his spine; he trembled with satisfaction, but the other two morons took it as something else.

Skylynx turned back to Starscream and saw that smile, a smile he always wished to tear off into scrap pieces. “Now, sing for us, Seeker.”

The smile was gone and replaced with that of sunken frown so heavy it practically hurt Starscream’s faceplates. After he cleared his intakes, Starscream sang reluctantly a melody he heard somewhere, “ _It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears. It’s a world of hopes and a world of fears; There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware—_ ** _It’s a small world_** _—_ ”

“ANYTHING BUT THAT ONE!”

* * *

Orion’s attention was distracted at regular intervals by the little noises, a distraction that led to his constant trailing behind Megatron, who had to stop and focus on remaining close by. By the third time the resparked Orion had dawdled and had nearly been left behind; Megatron's patience had reached its limit.

Megatron grasped at the unpainted upper arm and hauled the mech up against him, until the small pedes hung in the air. Now face to face with the former warlord, who bowed just enough to connect their visual streams, Orion was given little opportunity to ignore him any further.

The smoldering anger contorted his already monstrous face as he spat out, "This is not a field trip, Pax. You are not on a little sojourn to explore the Underworld. The Underworld is not a place for curiosity and yours will get you killed! If I am to be your Guardian, you still stay close to my guard at all times. Do you understand?" Oral lubricant splattered through jagged denta, and bright-blue optics stared in fear and shock. Satisfied that at least Orion had just begun to fear him, even if he didn't know enough to fear the Underworld, Megatron all but tossed Orion in front of him. There he stood and stared at the smaller bot, his optics unyielding in their search for confirmation of comprehension.

Orion stumbled forward against a stalagmite to catch his balance and his momentum. In the shadows he looked at Megatron; his lively solar-flare optics twinkled as he coursed with emotions in response to such a reprimand — both verbal and physical. The fear faded but the light did not. "... I understand." Orion's voice trembled against his constrained composure. The little figure was hunched over and the field radiating off Orion vibrated with fear, and still he did little more than regard the intimated terror.

So much like the archivist of old and the seed of Prime. It pleased Megatron to find further evidence of the innate character of his old friend and old enemy.

"Then get moving, Archivist," he growled. His tone implied in so many ways that he would stay to the rear to better keep Orion at task.

They moved through the caves and across the latticework, into massive caverns and tunnels so small that Megatron regularly had to walk with a hunch. A few paths took them to a dead end or a tunnel too small for Megatron, which forced them to turn around and back track. It lasted for hours with little exchanged between them, and nothing that resembled a conversation.

Eventually they came across an abandoned Cyberjellyfish warren, which became difficult to navigate and keep in step. However, Megatron stopped and combed through his primary and secondary sensor arrays, and referred in silence to the read out of his tertiary sensors, kept hidden under his helm. With his compiled input, Megatron navigated them through the best of the ability he could manage, which was more than adequate compared to most. He rarely took a wrong turn through the stringy crystalline deposits left by the jellyfish, chiefly avoiding those that could give out under foot; traps for prey.

One trap was sprung by Orion, who had lost his balance and placed a pede out of step. Though elephantine by comparison, Megatron's swiftness of mind and body allowed him to reach out and snatched the youngling from the long drop, and replaced his charge back on sure ground.

A long sweeping optical ridge was raised, and Megatron shared a deadpan expression with Orion,

Affected by Megatron's side-sight, Orion turned away his plain-toned helm to break the shared visual contact, and his field gurgled with gratitude and embarrassment. Neither still had anything to say.

They continued on past the warren, back into another giant cavern that dwarfed even Megatron, and began a mindless navigation of the spiderweb pathways.

Orion broke the heavy silence with a question voiced in lightness, "What did you mean by _'if I am to be your Guardian'_?" He had no idea the weight of such a question.

"I am to be your Guardian, that is what I mean."

Silence carried after it, as Orion's neuralnet combed through the meaning within the context. Dissatisfied, he queried, "What is a Guardian?" It was exact, with an inflection that properly signified that he wanted to know what a Guardian was in Megatron's terms and in this situation.

"Guardians are assigned to guard and protect younglings, which are new life from the Well. Typically, Cybertronian younglings are raised in generation packs, which in the past have been divided according to caste." Of all the words spoken, Megatron's disgust at the word caste was emphasized by his tone.

Uninterested by the inflection to the term, Orion's next question focused on another detail. "Am I the only one you guard?"

Vermillion optics rolled at the back of Orion's helm before his answer, "Yes." 

"Why?"

"Because I was fortunate to only ask for one instead of a gaggle of needy younglings," Megatron stated as fact, his air calm and exasperated.

Orion thought on this, and withheld his next question for sometime, though finally it came, just as Megatron knew it would. "You asked for me?"

Pedesteps stopped without faltered grounding, but Orion kept forward motion for some nanokliks, and turned around when he registered the significance of Megatron's pedesteps gone quiet. He turned to look at his guardian, with a face so calm and kind with curiosity.

Megatron did not want to explain that he had asked for Optimus Prime, having long since accepted the passing of Orion Pax in his life. Too many questions would come, and the archivist's mind would not be satisfied without elaboration.

So, Megatron motioned with a claw and said in a tone that he hoped even the precarious Orion could understand, "Move."

After that, the silence went on and dialogue ceased once more. Which was fine to the mechs, both young and old. The silence was neither companionable nor adversarial; it simply was there.

It had been hours since they begun the trek, with the sol cycle nearly over. Orion's pace began to erratically shift from the pace Megatron tried to enforce to a slow one. With the ground gained increasing, Orion's pedesteps began to wobble and his field fluctuated between increased size & low density, to that of a tightly bound field close to his frame. The youngling was tired.

After the second near-fall of the edge of a drop, Megatron had had enough. "Into that outcrop," he said with tested patience and a gesture. He should have known that eventually they would have to recharge, and that he would outlast the younger mech.

The small cave made Megatron hunch and lower his frame; Orion nearly collapsed against the wall in exhaustion.

While his charge took the first moment to rest his optics, Megatron relieved him of the fuel tank he carried. All the guardian did was take a half-swallow, then thrust it into Orion's face.

"Refuel."

Orion did so as if on autopilot. His tired control let slip a few drops of energon between the corner of his mouth and down his chin.

With a hiss at the waste, Megatron reached forward that tipped the tank upward so less would fall. "Be careful, Pax. You do not waste resources when you have so little!" The tone of his words were harsh, however the volume controlled and produced no detectable reverberation off the walls.

With his fill, Orion gurgled and Megatron removed to servo to let the youngling pull it away. There was still energon on his lips, and Megatron stared in fascinated disgust.

Younglings could be such slobs.

Orion's bent helm made Megatron angry at the visual reminder of the short time the youngling could function before recharge. Just as Orion began to nod off, his systems already beginning it sync into a rhythmic function, Megatron spoke loudly out of spite.

"Orion!"

The mech made a little jump, and Megatron smirked with cruel satisfaction. But he played it down with reasonable tones to follow, which he said with, "If you require so much recharge, then we will have to make greater ground than on pedestep."

Cerulean light was directed towards him, and Orion seemed to start a fight against the pull of recharge by looking at him with a expectation of a suggestion. "What else can we do but walk?"

"You need to transform," Megatron said as if he was suddenly the master of the universe and Orion was his ignorant little apprentice that was eager for his secrets.

But Orion did not know of nor understand transformation. Although it was something his people were born and built with the capability of, they had to be taught before the first transformation. All he managed was a tired blink at Megatron.

With an exasperated vent, Megatron said, "Come here."

In doing so, Orion sat down by Megatron's side and leaned against him. It took a single gesture to get him to rearrange his position so his back rather this side was pressed against the larger frame.

Actions of their previous linking were repeated, and Orion still winced at the first sink of the plug-head into his neural-port. His mind was exhausted and trusting, and once more allowed Megatron access without question. His subconscious subroutines were sifting through all the data gathered throughout the past day, content to analyze at a steady pace.

Once more the guardian compiled an executable file and compressed it before he sent it through the feed. Contained within was the basic lesson of transformation, the instinct awoken easily in their kind. Megatron knew he could have taught Orion without the interface, but the constraints of time and patience made this the more preferable approach.

Like a long string of vector-points and numerical sequences, Megatron pulled out a memory he retained without acknowledgement. Together and analyzed by Orion's T-Cog's primary processor, it gave out a schematics for a simple vehicle mode; one too small for Megatron to ever use, though one he remembered well with detail, which he had kept all these eons for no reason he cared to decompile.

Before he could demand a test and before he could pull from the young mind, Megatron could feel Orion's consciousness slip into power down.

It was like being left behind in a warm fog. Everything was open though clouded, and Orion's entire neuralnet appeared to be unguarded. With such trust and opportunity, Megatron indulged in exploration.

Through the various programs, data bases, and the core of the operating system he pushed into. There were binary doors that opened at the barest of digital touch, and some barriers that gave a little more resistance. Still, everything had an ease of access that made him curious about the firewall previously discovered in the auxiliary memory core. With determination he ventured towards it, and at the same bare touch he found it still refused him entry. Had he not been so careful he likely would have been shocked enough to dislodged Orion's current state of mind, that being noted the youngling still stirred in his recharge state. Megatron decided to leave the firewall well enough alone for now.

As he began to find the disconnection exit, Megatron went around and explored other areas rather than retracing his exact steps. Already the make up of Orion's mind had changed. It was far more aware, and applied the use of language to build a repository of knowledge through his limited experience.

Megatron was discomfited by the small glint of pride that came into him.

With those thoughts pushed aside, Megatron drove his mind within the unconscious psyche. It still worked in this state, and it was still inviting and comfortable with him. In fact, the mind seemed soothed by his presence, and in return, Orion's subconscious let a steady flow of returned calm filter into Megatron.

Eventually, he too succumbed to recharge in that state.

During the recharge cycle, Megatron had neither particularly bad nightmares of terror nor the vivid temptation of conquest. Instead, he felt a burgeoning levity that felt out of place in the darkness of his mind.

Images still filtered, though fogged and murky. Images of his battle with Optimus before the volcano, when he came to the belief that the prophecy must have been speaking of him and that would have been his day of victory. It had not, and the only victory he obtained directly from the Unicron incident had been the momentary retrieval of Orion Pax, albeit in Prime’s frame, for purposes of deciphering _Project Iacon_ ; there had also been the personal victory of seeing Prime’s face innocent and obedient to him. Not that it had lasted long.

Other images included the bottom of Earth’s ocean with the conjured visage of Unicron staring down on him as if he was a half-functioning cyberfly. Only, in time, the sea bed was traded for emptiness and Unicron was taken away from his mind, pushed aside by a mist that crawled across the floor of darkness. The mist radiated like that silver lining so many idealistic fools spoke about, only it drifted from the horizon and obscured the shadow. Suffused with warmth, it acted without a scheme as it wrapped up and into his mind. It was calmness, it was patience, and it was comfort. Megatron did not know what to do with any of it, and his subconscious instinct was to try and hide from that which was everywhere.

Eventually the mental spirits and poltergeists drew away, disappeared into the far-away recesses of his mind. The silver mist and the darkness it pushed all went back behind the barrier, and the recharge finally slipped into a dreamless state of rest.

When the minimal recharge cycle was completed, Megatron’s systems began to warm-up to full function. It was always easier on a mecha to take their time to warm-up than to force a cold-start. The war had rendered a slow power-up a virtual luxury, even for someone as powerful as Megatron. Now his systems began to feel his age and wear when he adhered to the recommendation. It took a while to consciously register that he was still tethered to Orion’s neuralport, and longer before he realized that he was still buoyant within the youngling’s mind.

It was not just his mind that pushed into the mech in company, but he began to realize that Orion was patiently floating in his. Rather than the initial concern of intrusion, Megatron’s half-alert mind found intrigue in the gentle intruder.

With a cold-jolt to his systems he remembered it was unwanted, and without warning he released the connector between them and subsequently startled Orion out of recharge.

The youngling dared to look disappointed through his recharge-fogged state of mind, and Megatron refused to let guilt fester that he should not have forced Orion’s fresh systems into cold-start so soon.

He sneered and tore away his frame, exited the alcove and crouched through the opening. “Get up, enough time has been wasted so you can... rest. I will look ahead for the next route. Do not leave this alcove. Make sure that you execute the data packet uploaded before I return. From here on, we will go in vehicle mode.”

With the youngling left behind in a place Megatron felt had some degree of safety, he went ahead to seek out the next possible path. It was more that a search, but rather a visual exploration with tepid steps to forge out the best route through the world beneath Cybertron's surface.

Instinct guided Megatron as well as experience, which was rather more than Orion had to lay claim. Eons of work in the energon mines taught Megatron how to select a route at a glance. Many assumed that because of the oppression and burden he suffered early in his life that the old miner found discomfort in the underground world. The opposite was true, for Megatron knew well how to deal and cope with the world below; it was a hardened familiarity that suited him. Megatron had spent more time in mines than among the civilization of Cybertron.

In that time, as Megatron wandered from his charge, something else akin to instinct began to play its role, only this time in that of Orion, who stood alone by the mouth of the alcove. Thoughts and feelings began to burrow in his mind with a ghostly sensation, and a similar phantom shift was ghosting over his thin plates and through his wires. He felt an itch, one he wanted to act on, though he knew not how. As much comfort as he found when Megatron was near, or each time after the bite of a hard line had settled, Orion felt a sudden urge that he would be comfortable somewhere else, though perhaps it was truly that he would feel best as something else.

Plating so plain caught his eye, as he stared at the simple forearm configuration with an intensity he knew not before. Orion did not know anything of imagination, not yet, but it began to awaken as coding began to unfurl in his mind and his processors digested it. Energon continued to seep into faraway veins, and he tried to trace the movement of the fluid as it passed through system after system.

To his amazement, the plate on his arm ruffled, a shift he had never experienced and yet now, he wanted to know it more. With concentration, Orion willed a repeat and the plates did so. The movement was small, a simple rise and fall, shift right to left. Yet, the simple movement made him aware of places that ached and were now teased by the pleasure of stretch.

On that sensation and prickle of instinct, Orion focused with the might of his fresh mind. He willed it to come again, to twist his plates further and stretch him out. It held a shape and was contained as a mass, and Orion wanted to become whatever it was. For although it was out of reach, he knew it belonged to him just as his arm might have.

There was a click, within his mind and buried deep on his lower-right abdominal quadrant of his chassis' cavity; Orion just knew that was where he had to concentrate, in the same capacity he now knew his name. This was when it happened: a change far greater than any time before, one that rearranged his plates rather than merely shifting the shell of his arm. Gears ground and plates moved, hydraulics were pulled in and out, and he could feel his very size transform along with the rest of his being.

No longer did he stand, for he had come to rest atop four tires, and the sound he once thought to be just signs of life now roared with eagerness. He felt both boxed in and free, and all Orion wanted to do was move every part revealed anew. The tires ground into the surface he once stood upon, the space he occupied became redefined, and he sensed the world with something more than sight and sound. An invisible cloak of something warm expanded all around him with a push, and he could feel the world as echoes of sensations that had no words just yet. Still, it showed him to the approach of a massive form he knew all too well.

Joy bubbled over within him and Orion rode the wave, which took him away to reverse the process until he could see his plain servos again. So happy was he, that Orion spun around and looked at his guardian. "Did you see that?"

Megatron heard the gleeful eagerness in the question, and stood to stare at the youngling with unimpressed optics. "Yes," he answered, and approached past the duplicated archivist to retrieve the last fuel tank.

Blue optics bore into him, and he tried not to care. For as stiff his spinal strut and disgusted his sneer, something within Megatron pulsed with pleasure that he did not have to give Orion a lesson to achieve what many had to be taught.

A thought made him pause and stare at the rocks they had called a berth. Primus had told him that no other will guard and protect Orion as he, and indicated that he alone would make Orion into the image others would see.

With purpose he turned to Orion and saw the afterimage of the smile taken away for that of a worried frown. To address it, Megatron at last said, "You have begun to learn what it means to be a _Transformer_."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megatron begins to learn the consequences of his neglect for Orion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter really does suck. I am so sorry.
> 
> Sorry for the delay, however, begin to expect them.
> 
> Thank you all for the positive feedback in the previous chapters; they are what keeps me going. I would like to thank Andromeda_Prime and Reyairia for their constant willingness to listen to me thrush out my ideas and that really keeps some ideas going.
> 
> Special thanks to beta Andromeda_Prime, who also was a sounding board along with Reyairia and Zuzeca.

From there they continued to travel away from the core, a path which took them further and deeper into the Underworld. Beneath the surface and away from the sanctuary of the core, Cybertron was a thicket of jagged latticework, tunnels and burrows, vaulted caverns, and creatures far beyond the memories of the dwellers above. Orion had no memory of anything else, so for him this was the world he lived in, as it was the world he was born into. Megatron guided him through, their travel now cut exponentially with the aid of flight and tire. Unfortunately for the curious youngling, this meant he was given fewer opportunities to look around at the horrific wonders to behold, or as Megatron once shouted -- 'to dawdle'.

As movers instead of crawlers, with his instinctual guidance, Megatron eventually brought Orion closer and closer to the surface; the heat of the sun began to warm the raw elements around them, and the pressure's decrease registered in the former miner's subterranean sensors. The destination, although unnamed and unspecified to his company, was familiar and focal for Megatron. In the passage of only a few sols, Megatron finally brought Orion to the place they had to call home.

It was a mine; abandoned and empty, transacted with all the signs of natural and societal rot. This was Megatron’s home. Now this so-called home was to be shared with something as innocent and helpless as a youngling, who had none of the experience or the physical fortitude to survive in the hardships of the cold southern hemisphere.

In the distance the faint sound of a colony of scraplets echoed across the carved cavern walls, and Megatron’s low rumbling growl answered back.

Such weakness made Megatron want to purge; he snarled as he surveyed his emptied home, to find out what damage bestial scavengers might have inflicted during his sojourn into the Core, and took stock of what it would take to ready this place for any degree of relative safety. The rest of Orion’s well-being rested solely in his clawed servos, and Megatron remembered with resentment how this was not what he wanted, and not been what he had asked for.

He wanted to see a capable Prime leading these imbeciles that already began to carve Cybertron into a new world before it had healed; none of them know what they were doing, and he could not enjoy any retirement or exile when hapless cretins ruled this world.

Trust Prime and Primus to rob him of his sweet respite into obscurity.

Underfoot scurried a zap-mouse, whose movement elicited a temptation for Megatron to squish under pede, and he threatened with a flinch to give in the temptation so before it scurried back between the cracks. Behind the once-Decepticon was the stare of Orion on his back. The youngling charge as always could not stop his shadow-like stalk of his guardian's movement. Megatron had no doubt that in time, the youngling’s inquisitiveness would erode away all minute measurements of sensibilities, and he would once again be warning the little slip of a mech to keep to safety.

Towards Orion he looked again, and could see the features of his hollowed hovel’s colors saturate the pigmentless reflection into a wash of fallacious color. An illusion of false hope stood before him, and Megatron looked at his charge as if he too were the pathetic little mouse.

Where was the timidness he so deserved? Instead, the bright blue optics stared at him with expectant trust; it was the rest of their environment the resurrected archivist had skepticism for.

“This cavern and the adjacent ones connected by the carved passageways, as well as the outer Hall, are our home, Pax. When I leave, at whatever time, for whatever purpose, you still stay in this area and do not leave. Is that understood?” he commanded, and ignored the drop of fallen pebbles disturbed by the boom of his voice. Rarely had his primal company ever heard him speak, as he had been alone in the past and denied all company.

“Will I be allowed to--” The infant’s voice tried already to question the integrity of Megatron’s decree, but froze into static at the small narrow of the burnt red optics.

“Yes yes, but only when I am here, and only if you keep in range of communication. Is that understood?”

Orion’s silver helm gave a low nod, not because he was slow to understand, but because he was reluctant to irritate his temperamental guardian further.

Good, the young one was already beginning to show respect through fear; perhaps he will not eviscerate the nubile ghost so readily in a fit of rage.

They stared at each other, and neither moved save for small signs of function; the cycle of ventilation rose and fell their chassis of varying sizes, Orion’s tessellated optics continuously twisted and burned in focus, and the three-paired helm fins twitched as the external world continued to feed stimuli. The youngling did not bow, cower, nor did he lash out with impatience, but watched Megatron with unwavering dedication.

Finally, satisfied with the most recent test of obedience, Megatron took a step back and towards the previously spoken of hall, and gestured towards his barren living arrangements, and said with the twist of an optic ridge, “I will return in a few cycles until recharge. In that time, entertain yourself within these confines.”

Their last recharge had been shortly before they broke the outer barrier of the Underworld, so as much as Megatron was tempted, he had to leave without a reasonable timetable to command that Orion power down at this time.

With a turn to the darkness, Megatron nearly slipped into the darker recesses of the mine, his helm bowed to accommodate the drop in the ceiling. As one last piece of advice, he warned, “Do not make too much noise. There are things in the dark that are attracted to sound.”

He hoped that in a second life, the little librarian could function in quiet.

As it turned out, Orion knew silence in his spark and found comfort in the quiet after Megatron departed. Although, it was not immediate, for the silence felt too much right after the massive mech abdicated this little hole of a home. However, soon after, his audio sensors began to reach further out and fill in where a voice once occupied. In the absence, Orion could hear little things scurrying around, and the drip of condensation fall from ceiling to floor.

The smallest of movements seem to consequence a barrage of cacophony in the doldrums. Just as his optics had easily adjusted to the darkness the further they got the core, his hearing did the same to become attuned to the deficiency of flight and ground propulsion and voice.

Everything around Orion was of dull mauve taupe with sickeningly grey energon stains; not a surface could be found to reflect what little light there was. In each room there was a single little source of light, each created by a lamp so small that Megatron had appeared to take great pains just to activate with large claws.

Orion searched in hopes of finding more, and in the smallest grotto he located a lamp so small it was more of a lantern, discarded to the side and among a pile of scrap. It was more comfortable in his palm than the others, and far too small for Megatron to have used. Under examination, Orion could see tell-tale signs of claw impressions, and could almost feel the agitation as he ran his plainer servos over the scores.

With some effort, Orion finally turned on the lantern and allowed a bath of illumination to wash over him; minuscule particles fluttered around, now visible to his optics, and danced an indistinct choreography.

For a brief while, Orion just watched the dust play in the air, moved around by a wave of his hand and how they moved both towards and away from his digits. Once bored of his cursory entertainment, he stood up and allowed the lantern’s light to fuse with his optical beams. Under such fresh illumination, the scrap pile became less of an amorphous heap, and revealed to be more of a treasure heap.

Most of what he found was defined slowly, piece by piece, with cursory scans completed with optical sensors, ordered through open data streams, recompiled as vector images, processed with his recognition software paired up to the vocabulary database; deep inside, his helm seemed to function hotter, and Orion found the sensation invigorating. So, with a galvanized zeal and neoteric composure, the inner archivist found himself beginning to follow through with an instinctual compulsion.

Through the pile he sorted, recognized by form and function for most items, assigned category by a variety of key features, and cataloged them into a growing number piles; to do so gave him relief from anxiety he had previously been unaware of, and a satisfaction that ran deeper.

As he took to task, Orion located among the discarded items were various tools of use. Things that were to be used to conduct minor repairs, open panels and compartments, and some were the precious dregs of cleaning solvents. One such bottle of liquid had a partly torn and partly burned label, but the visible sections said, with pictographic syllables: ‘This product is intended to remove baked-on ash stains; exterior plating and non-mecha electronics only; DO NOT EXPOSE TO OPTICS, NEURAL OR SENSORY NETTING, PROTOFLESH, OR DIRECTLY ONTO CIRCUITS."

He tried to gently rub away the damage that hid it, but his servos only tore the label further and Orion could not make out the instructions.

A frustrated vent plumed visibly into the air, curled into the lantern’s light, and Orion looked at the stains on his plain servos. Just like so much down in the mines, Orion began to suffer the fate of everything unwanted and his once polished plates developed a grime that crept up on him. However, for all he knew, this was how he should be down here, where he was to live on a floor of ore and fallen smog; perhaps it would make him feel at home.

However, it did not, and Orion tried to smear off the fresh stains, but all that did was push the grime deeper into his seams and make him itch. It was unpleasant, and he began to feel the intensity if this incommodious environment.

The lantern flickered briefly and caught his attention which was drawn in to a pin point reminder: Orion had a guardian who gave him fuel, brought him out of the Underworld, told him this home was safe, and all he had to do was listen and obey. No longer did he feel the seed of ingratitude take plot, and instead the opposite flourished. So, he began to return to task to make the most of what he had discovered, in the hopes of through his compulsion he would contribute to Megatron somehow.

Onward he worked, to find, recognize, categorize, and process onto the next, and did so without a single word for several megacycles. The quiet kept on as did Orion, until thunderous steps began to approach; Orion felt little fear, and peered from behind the grotto’s entryway to fight the demonic glow of his guardian’s face.

Before Orion could enter the larger room, Megatron looked around and felt a boil of irritation; where was Pax and why were all his lamps on?

With a bark and the strike of his pedes on the ground, “ORION! WHERE ARE--”

Summoned, Orion stepped out with just enough noise to alert Megatron to his presence, but he did not speak otherwise to the question that began and stopped short with a sudden glare sent in his direction.

“Why are all the lamps on?” he demanded, and drew up his towering frame and the plates rattled with irritation; Orion felt a desire to slink back into the storage grotto, however, he stood his ground with barely a fall to his shoulders.

“I was trying to see the chambers and I need--”

“To keep ALL the lights on while you were in one room? Or have you developed the ability to be in multiple places at once? NEVER TAKE POWER FOR GRANTED, PAX!” The boom of his voice was raised in volume, and just the same Megatron raised his monstrous claw as if to strike. Before the downward motion even began, before he realized what he had began to do in gesture, Megatron saw the black and red smears on the finish-less face and the ever-bright blue optics.

Claws fell again, and he clamped down with on fist and in volume. Through his denta he explained, “All real power is not given, it is hard-earned and never limitless. Everything you see here that functions, from the glow of the lamps to your spark, all of it run on the power that begins with energon. Energon that I have to go into the deep and mine. Energon that must be processed painstakingly. Energon that is finite.”

Unlike many of his Decepticons, Orion’s justifiable cowardice faded for not only awe of his words, but in true admiration. However, just as many of those once under his rule, the youngling’s admiration was also nearly blind and it frustrated him.

This was a subject for another time, so the tirade came to be paused for when that time came.

“Energon which... we both require,” he said with a tone lowered and nearly hushed, he gestured towards one of the fuel tanks he had retrieved from Prime’s discarded and scavenged frame.

Without much thought, Megatron first took of the tank’s precious contents until he had enough to function through the next megacycle, and gave the remnants to the youngling.

While Orion took his ration, Megatron watched him and remembered the fleeted look of hollow comprehension on his charge’s face; the would-be archivist still did not understand how dire their situation could easily become. But, Megatron remembered life in the mines when Cybertron flourished above, with the glittering city of Iacon a gem while Kaon was buried under the industrial pollution. Of all the horrors of their world, nothing could compare to the mines. These were horrors that if fate smiled upon them, then the resurrected world might never see again.

Still, the images of terrors haunted Megatron. Although the ghosts of his past had faded into obscurity while the war raged, only to surface with brevity, Unicron’s mending of his spark and armor had brought them back; of course, the former tyrant also knew it could just be the tyrannical solitude of the abandoned hell.

In these tunnels and many like them, Megatron was ushered into his guild for hard labor. His dense, quick-burning spark and massive frame had made him expendable and ideal for such hardship, so he was cast into the places the rest of Cybertron forgot. Everything else they had once forgotten came here, including the worst of deviants for rehabilitation, though society hoped they would be terminated in the course of their sentence. Worse than any gladiatorial ring, as a youngling at Orion’s age, Megatron had learned that there were two types in these tunnels: the predators and those who they hunted.

When his frame grew too tired and the old warlord had to succumb to the call of recharge, he could offline his optics and his audio sensors, and still he could recall with vivid recollection the screams, wails, and the moans of the injured, the slowly dying, and those who became prey in their sleep. It was here that he had learned quick how to be a hunter. The lull of recharge came to all, particularly those young or worked hard; neither of them were both, but together they encompassed the entire spectrum of those who had to succumb, even if terrors waited for them in the drift of memories.

Against an angled slab of ore and dust he sank his weary frame. There was nothing illustrious about this berth, but it was his and his alone. The sanctuary in the deep culminated, situated in a chamber deeper into the labyrinthine alcoves carved out as his home in the mines, as a place of safety for an old warlord to rest his weary helm. The youngling followed and took a lower slab positioned adjacent to the larger one, and took his place with no indication of hesitation about where his place was. Such boldness made the massive brute stop and stare at Orion, as the smaller bot moved and shifted to situate himself with familiar ease and occupy a space that had only been in the past a place to fling his arm without the cannon.

Here in the forgotten mines where the first seeds of the Decepticon dissent began to sprout they were to rest; they fell into recharge from a day that ended with a sense of the anticlimactic.

A new day rose at the end of their power down mode, and together they fell into a cycle through the next sols. One sol cycle turned into several, each passing into an orn, and before Megatron knew it a breem had passed.

That passage of time sent Megatron back into the mines, where at the start of each sol he toiled away for their survival, to eke out a meager existence in the hopes that any reliance on others would be minimal. It was unfortunate, for it required that Megatron entrust Orion's safety to the maze-like hovel they had to call home. As protector it was his duty to go out and get whatever the youngling needed to survive; as guardian something snuck into his spark and made him anxious to keep the youngling under his optic at all time, to bestow onto Orion more than just fuel and a safe place.

There was no explanation as to why Megatron would think through his cycles in the mines about the youngling. The worry that set in was rustic, corrosive, and consumed him just as slowly. As he carved away to find more energon, Megatron tried to piece together clues of what Orion did while he was away; much of it was a mystery, for Megatron could not wholly fathom what would busy a young archivist without an archive. Their nature was very strong, most Cybertronians almost compelled to act on the traits that made them candidates in their caste. Megatron had never been leery of being underground, not even after the horrors he had survived before crawling into the gladiatorial ring to make a name for himself. In caves he was at peace, but he always had a primal desire to tear into the earth and pry out whatever treasures it had to bear.

There was no denying that the caste system made full benefit of the personalities of their occupants, and that was what made it function for so long. However, the caste system had deteriorated long before Megatron tore it down, and he never regretted doing so. While he would rather tear apart Cybertron than suffer under the system again, he also found that he longed for the tools of the caste system to help in this endeavor with Orion.

He was a warlord, and warlords made terrible guardians. His skill lay with the art of war, honed it to a craft. To his minions he inflected respect, admiration, and fear. To his enemies he inflected terror, dread, and the desolation of hope. The only mech that had never stood in his way and survived was Optimus Prime. His retirement had been forced upon him, yet he was comfortable to suffer in barbaric comfort away from the prying optics of a scornful Cybertron.

It was all he had known: mining and fighting. Nothing had ever been made known to Megatron that would give him the tools or skill to now raise a newspark, particularly not one so... fragile, ill-equipped to face the toils of unforgiving wilds. In the past, Orion Pax viewed fighting a sport where none should ever face serious harm, or a step of last resort. This was not the sort of little one that Megatron would have ever been inclined to rear. No, he had always the inclination to raise armies.

Yet, his mind and spark had slowly become preoccupied with the task by the second orn. Most of his time was not free to the pursuit of youngling rearing, but to the hard task of foraging through the nearly depleted tunnels for scraps left in the mines. The task paid off after the two mechs had fallen into a familiar cycle, well-practiced over the span of the orns. Down in the deep he struck a particularly fruitful energon vein. It would supply them with what was comparatively an excess of fuel, and would steadily flow through the old automated processor he had flicked from the ruins of Kaon. Now there was more raw energon than he could process, and rather than tuck away from Orion, Megatron broke his recharge cycle and decided that sol would be spent with the youngling -- to oversee his development.

Bright blue optics stared at him, unmoving and consuming; Orion appeared disturbed the longer Megatron lingered in the chambers, although the watchful gaze of his guardian likely had more of a role than his mere presence. In the silence he sat in humor, waiting to see how long it would take before the small mech spoke up.

It took an inviting sweep of a servo to break their silence.

"Are you not departing for the deep?" Orion asked at last, and Megatron heard the incredulous tone of his old friend from the youngling. Although it was not the first time, the tone still made his weary spark flare warmly at the familiarity. More and more he saw the little signs of the Iacon archivist that went beyond personal quirks and compulsions.

"Not this sol, Orion. The energon processor has plenty of crystal to work through the next several sol cycles. I am going to take a break; my struts are old and I am tired of doing the work of the young."

Under his words Orion's optics went wide, and Megatron could almost feel the stunted apology in the air. He chuckled, and Orion's wide-opticed stare went narrow on him; sometimes the little would-be clerk did not take kindly to being the subject of Megatron's humor, and that just fueled the elder's amusement more.

"I intend to find out what occupies your time during my absences."

Orion had never considered that Megatron would want to know about the passage of his sol cycle, and part of him betrayed his gratitude with a desire to send the miner away so he could resume his activities without being watched. The youngling glanced around the main chamber as if it had lost all its familiarity, and he was at a loss of where to begin. An apprehensive look was cast to Megatron, who realized that maybe Orion was worried of a critical gaze.

That bashful introversion reminded Megatron of Orion’s past aversion to the watchful gaze of others while he worked, thought, fueled, or did nearly any of the cyclical behaviors plain to him. Once he had inquired and rejected an answer. It took time before the Archivist explained: it was something about the observer’s aversions to being the object of observation. Now it appeared that trait was also innate to Pax.

A cast was sent to the entryway adjacent, carved more to Orion’s size than Megatron’s. However, it was the cove that Orion disappeared to at length, and darted out of when he returned after his work. Megatron had never bothered to peer into the tiny room.

“Would you like to see my agglomeration?” The question was dropped like a stone in a pool of vicious liquid. Orion’s invitation was helpless and hapless, but it was all the young one seemed to have.

_“Would you like to see my quarters?” Pax had once asked, after the end Megatron’s tour of Iacon. The city was vast, and Pax’s world within was still narrow._

Megatron's young charge was so identical in many ways to Pax, that Megatron was occasionally pulled. Having thought on it, realization came that though the youngling under his care may not have been the Pax of the past, he was still him in all the foundational ways that made up his brethren companion. It made it easier to sort through them in him, and relieved his old neutralnet the strain of differentiating between the two. It was decided: from then on Pax would be their past, and Orion shall be their future. That did not stop the past from haunting the future, and for Megatron his ghost looked up at him with optics void of fear, and an innocent curiosity to share.

Into the small adjacent chamber Orion led him. Here Megatron was so tall that he had to crouch nearly in half, and so wide he had to enter sideways. The ceiling was not much better until he got the center, and even there his spine was twisted into a shepherd's hook. The room was unremarkable, easily dismissed by Megatron in the past.

"This room is... Rather small. I used to chuck rubbish in here," he admitted, but his words highlighted what he had discovered.

Orion's agglomeration was all the pitched trash that Megatron had collected out of the caves, filched from ruins or abandoned structures, and the unwanted items unloaded through trade with the only source he had. For whatever reason the items were considered useless by him, and thrown haphazardly into forgotten piles. Most we're broken tools, scrapped items, and useless trinkets -- the everyday trash of others. For Orion it seemed far more.

The heap had been sorted, categorized, and placed in an order that Megatron had to examine for revelation. Here the collection had taken on the form of a rustic museum of old Cybertron. With bemused curiosity, Megatron tried to understand what Orion had accomplished and ultimately answer a stressed question: why?

Those same blue optics watched him, and with each observational lingering pass over what had been accomplished, a small bit of pride began to shine through. It was more than the order brought to chaos that Orion had accomplished.

"How did you carve the shelves?" asked Megatron. The mentioned details were not finely crafted, but only rudimentary and sometimes lacking in more than just gracefulness; the functionality was also compromised. However, he was impressed by the effort.

Towards a corner stepped Orion, who retrieved a rusting metal crate. To Megatron he offered the container, and stood by when it was taken. He watched with disciplined patience as Megatron probed through the assortment of ideas. All it took was the push of a single claw tip to sort through what he was shown: tools.

Megatron returned the crate to Orion. "Omnicon tools. They were some of our finest crafters in the day. Many of them worked these old mines, supervising the Constructicon's labor."

He had watched the little responsive twitches of Orion's vertical audiofins and relived the process of deciphering their language. He knew that the largest perched forward meant keen interest, and the middle indicated he was at ease. The smallest usually only betrayed the darker emotions of Pax or Prime. When the archivist had ascending to their people's highest ranks, his entire language become controlled and formal. His words were warm and stiff, his language always conveyed a meaning, and the fins barely moved anymore. On the battlefield in discussions, Megatron kept tight focus for any movements, but they were few and far between. When Optimus had reverted to his pre-Prime state, the Decepticon leader had marveled how once more they twitched forward of back and betrayed his mood as readily as his wide-optics. Now, he saw the return of expression on a face that had been kept off battlefields.

The middle one flickered forward and to the tilted center resting place, and the optics kept rotating alternately as it tracked Megatron's face. "The tools had rust and soot stains when I found them. I cleaned them to the best that I could," said Orion, who glanced back at the old drill marks left in the cavern's surface. He drafted back to Megatron, and the fins betrayed a sudden nervous curiosity.

Unicron's armor rattled as Megatron instinctively shifted for whatever question could come. He had learned in that past that an archivist's curiosity was always prying, always thirsty for sated quench. The questions would only come if answers were not discovered through investigation or observation. So, he waited, and the question appeared to require another invitation. "What is it?"

Immediately the entry was taken, and Orion barged in with his thirsty question. "Were you a Constructicon?"

"No, although my occupation was not so dissimilar. I was a miner here within depths of mines such as these and many more, before the war," he answered, and froze when he realized that the second statement added a context unheard of by Orion.

The youngling immediately latched on. "War?" The word was a heavy query that sank Orion's helm to one side. "There was a war?"

"Yes. It began long ago, and ended recently." He began to move his hulking form back through the exit, but his retreat could not be quite quick enough to escape the interrogation.

"Did you fight in it?"

To the question Megatron turned his back, shoved his massive frame back into a proper space, where Orion followed directly on the heels of his pedes. Silence may have come from Orion, however Megatron's mind was loud with thoughts. He had never considered that his actions of old would have to be addressed so soon, yet he had always known it would come up someday. He wondered how he could explain a war that devastated the youngling's world, forced him to become a military leader, and the only leader that ever successfully stood up against Megatron? How could he talk about the war at all without ruining Orion's fresh innocence and rot away Megatron with his oppressive tyranny?

How could the youngling understand what Megatron barely managed to comprehend?

Orion waited expectantly. The silence dragged on, like the sounds of dead-weight frames dragged across the battlefield after the weapon’s fire had burnt out. Megatron could still hear the dreadful sounds after a terrible fight: lamenting wails of surviving trine members, odes bellowed by Grounders about their fallen comrades, and the death rattles of the dying. At the time he wallowed happily in the symphony of such misery; the coda of battle. Now it was the horrific haunts that some part of his twisted spark still craved. Things he would never wish to explain to Orion, not if he wanted to successfully protect the youngling.

He abjured to past speeches overheard by Prime to the people of Cybertron. In words so painful with anguish, Optimus had described the civil war in words that appealed to the heralds of peace: the Autobots and their supporters. The speech roused sympathy from the undecideds, and shared the pain of the tattered world. At the time, Megatron loathed how his enemy had described them all equal victims, and circumvented the Decepticon accusation that their Autobot enemies were merely privileged weaklings that could not stomach a call to defend new freedom. Now, though, he drew from Prime's own words to describe to his reborn self.

"We all did, Orion. It was a civil war, which means we, as a people, fought against each other. We, the Cybertronians, were our own enemies. Friend became foe, brother was pitted against brother. We would conquer and destroy our own cities. All of Cybertron was an army against itself and the battlefield on where we clashed," he said, with no mockery to Optimus' words. The truth of the poetic description stung, because now he knew his guilt in it.

"If Cybertron was your home and if your enemy was also your people, then why did you fight?"

Coldness stung through Megatron's spark, speared with a hot lance of hatred that pierced his sparkchamber. Outwardly he growled to Orion and bared his teeth; the smaller bot nearly shrank, then squared his narrow shoulders and defied his fear. His display was so animalistic, so evocatively beastly as the terrors they left in the Underworld, that Orion took a step back from his guardian in fright for the first time. Yet, the defiance braver coruscated in white-ember flashes within the cyan optics, and Megatron found himself staring briefly back into time.

A thrill of pleasure had warmed his malformed spark to see fear inflected on another. But it faded, and Orion's trust in him did not. Megatron retreated to offer Orion his back. Again, he did not want to explain the war, his faults, their adversarial brotherhood in arms -- not now. He took the words of his gentler antithesis, and regurgitated them with recalcitrance. "For the same reason why any war is waged: with hate-filled righteousness, compromised by a body of pride, and ends only for survival." His words were shared to the rock face, and seeped towards Orion.

Rather than pull away from the creeping poison, Orion stepped towards Megatron. With each subsequent step he drew closer, and when the steps came to a stop it was with a field that danced with kindness. Although Megatron could not witness the out-stretched servo from his vantage, he could sense it through the disturbance in his field.

"It is over." For someone so young, so ignorant of what the ravages that had transpired across their world, Orion knew enough to be comfortingly confident.

"Yes."

Determined to move from that line of conversation, Megatron looked back at the youngling. "My tour of your cyclical sol affairs is not over. Tell me: what do you do with that junk?" Towards the shorter mech he stepped closer, towered over the tiny would-be archivist. Now the dull servo was pressed into the barrel of Megatron's chest, and pinned flat against the thicker armor by Megatron's own.

* * *

When the first attempts for acknowledgement went without heed, Knock Out raised the volume of his vocoder’s output and tried again.

 _Groan, pitiful moan, plaintive sigh_ — Knock Out cast his optics upwards to see if the other physician had finally given him the attention he justly deserved. Instead, he got nothing, only the unyielding back of orange  & white, and that annoying little antennae that swayed back and forth with each movement.

Not that Knock Out was in any rush to get out of his own Earth-based alt mode. Lines and curves were beautiful, but those fleshies had such a wonderful eye for organic shapes. Since their race was completely inorganic, Knock Out knew that they just couldn’t quite grasp the artful beauty of that strange little world. Perhaps it would change in the future, now that many of their race had gone forth and explored the abundance of the universe.

But, aesthetic evolution was a concern for another time. Mainly when Knock Out’s finish needed touch up; oh, how Knock Out would miss the variety of polishing waxes. Right now, the concern for the former Decepticon was solving an absence attentive stimulation, and the only obvious source came from the physician who supposedly worked with him.

 _Snort._  Knock Out knew he was little more than a glorified nurse. That was beneath him! That was work of others, like Breakdown — _tap, tap, tap_ — Knock Out felt interjected with sulky laments. It just wasn’t fair what happened to Breakdown. How could his partner let him down like that? The former Wrecker had been trusted as a valuable asset to the Decepticon cause — to _him_.

Pointed claws rapped against the surface, ambivalent of the slow sway that began to bend Ratchet’s antennae; a pendulum motion worn away by thinning patience.

“Knock Out!” Ah yes, the familiar bark of irritation.

It earned a dramatic lift of the red helm, and bleary optics that tried to look too unfocused. _Woe is me_ , Knock Out tried to convey with his expression alone.

Blue optics barely deigned to peer over the Autobot shoulders, broken briefly from attentive efforts; similar concentration vented towards patience, and Ratchet still would not break the narrow of his tight vision focused on the other physician. “Stop that, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Spinal column straight, hip canted out, Knock Out swished a hand in characteristic dramatics and matched the lilt of his voice, “Eh, don’t try and claim that this is the most—” Sharp claws etched into the precious berth’s surface and produced a noise that managed to earn a cringe of irritation from Ratchet nearly as severe as the sultry whinge could have credited alone.

“Byep-byup-byup! Don’t you dare start trying to claim that you’re bored!”

Red hollowed optics blinked in feigned innocence, stared at Ratchet but more opticked the tool clutched in the strong, dexterous servos. Part of the racer suspected foul-play in the works, so he stepped back into instinct with his own servos raised up. The claws played with the light, like delicate ribbons of illumination that danced under his wiggly touch.

However, he was not allowed to speak, “We are swamped with refugees!” Now Ratchet’s full force was almost upon him, in every way by physical. Yet, Knock Out felt the pressure push him back with each step. A beaten drum of frustration and anxiety rhythmically hit the Decepticon in waves; every other beat was met with a retreating step. “Most of whom haven’t seen a proper physician since before they left Cybertron! Patched up with inferior materials, gunked up to their fuel-pumps in organic sludge. How many eroded denta need to be polished?! T-cogs need to be de-calcified, tertiary and secondary processors are showing signs of erosion,” Ratchet finally invaded Knock Out’s personal field, and thrust a digit straight into the expanse of plates above the thrumming spark. “You’re always so worried about your finish, but we’re seeing rust pox in bots who don’t even have memory engrams of when they were younglings!”

“Okay, but—” The lecture was unwisely interrupted.

“So don’t start telling me that you’re bored!”

With a swipe of his arm struts, Knock Out brushed Ratchet aside and ducked under away from the physician. Several datapads were soon in his grasp, and sorted through with fast optics. Ratchet probably thought he was only pretending to pay attention, but the truth was that Knock Out had learned how to speed read a long time ago; he hated the time it took, and the faster it was done the faster he was finished.

“I was going to ask: Okay, but why are we seeing so many full mecha with rust pox? That’s a youngling disease." Datapads down, optics to the front, Knock Out saucily watched Ratchet from his peripheral vision; he didn’t trust when next his paint would get touched.

The posed question seemed to calm the Autobot field medic down, and the older bot shook his helm, cleared up the cob webs of his outburst. Confusion seemed not to settle well with him, although no one in the medical field appreciated a lack of clarity. Another rattle of his vents then he said, “I don’t know, and that’s our problem. The Well hasn’t produced a single newspark since—” Something in the old bot’s voice cracked, and the assumption laid firmly at the pedes of one absent Prime.

 _Hm_ , Knock Out’s attention was divided between the issue of concern, and his concern of the dullness inflected upon his claws. _‘Will have to get to sharpening that,’_ he thought to himself. When his silence went unchallenged, to the side he glanced and saw Ratchet staring off in the presumptive direction of the Well; that forlorn look returned to his medical comrade, and Knock Out hated its sight. Each time Ratchet looked so pathetic and sparkbroken, and each time Knock Out felt something unset his tanks.

Anyone else would have recognized it as empathy, but Knock Out simply thought it was poorly refined energon upset by old-botness.

“Well, it might be everyone’s Auto-immune systems. Not all of them went to organic worlds, and many were just cooped up in a tin can for sol cycles on end. Our nanite immunity learns, constantly, and we know from past pandemics that if we don’t get exposed to a problem for a long time, then the immunity countermeasures are purged and make room for other issues,” Knock Out spoke with all his usual confidence, characteristically paired with a shrug of his curved pauldrons.

From what he could observe, the distraction worked and Ratchet began to brood on what he said rather than Prime’s absence. As long as it was something, anything else other than moping over the loss of a friend, because nothing else would irritate Knock Out worse than maudlin whinging over past lives spent.

Digit hooked on his chin, Ratchet’s mouth began to move subtly in time with the murmured words he spoke, “That… would make sense. If we aren't exposed to rust pox for a long time, we might lose our immunity. Some of us might still have it, simply due to our visitation worlds like Earth and were continuously exposed to common rust on a regular basis. Without that exposure, our autoimmune systems will purge its resistance in favor of new and more pressing concerns.” ~~  
~~

“Our systems didn’t forget how to fight against the pox,” Knock Out spoke, as though he was finally in wave length with someone else.

And Ratchet seemed to much the same, continuing a statement with a fluidity that both had forgotten of colleagues. “So, we just need to find a way to teach the systems how to remember once more.”

A strum of pride came from Knock Out, who felt as though he had been heard as an intellectual equal by someone of unquestionable skill; it felt good to not be top dog by guarantee, but by merit and hard work. It meant someone trusted him, respected him, and Knock Out had little experience with either.

Immediately, he was done with hard work and groaned when Ratchet went back to the main console and started to compare past data on rust pox with what they had now. As it would seem, Ratchet knew very well what that noise meant.

“While I begin my research, I have an assignment for you.”

Not exactly what Knock Out had in mind. Smokescreen and Bumblebee were likely on break, maybe burning rubber and all the while without him. _Whinge_. “Doctor, I think you have me mistaken with a nurse. I’m not Breakdown and I’m not—”

“I don’t care what you are and what you’re not. You’re going out there and surveying all the refugees. Find everyone with medical experience. You and I are not enough.” Words and servo waved off Knock Out’s protests.

Sometimes, he hated the Autobots enough to defect to the exiles.

While Knock Out continued his muttered protests, Ratchet’s own murmurs were caught by his audials. The first were undefinable, other than a few choice words strung together that vaguely referred to the necessity of full Grid access.

“What does the Grid have to do with finding medical bots?” Knock Out dared to stop his progress, desperate for any distraction.

Nonchalantly and distracted, Ratchet barely bothered to turn his helm and project his voice in return. “Oh, to double-check the credentials of some. Don’t want to give physician’s access to a patient to someone questionable. We don’t have records of almost anyone.”

Ratchet had already turned and stared back at the stream of code and the constructed schematics, so he did not see the broad opticked worry that widened the red racer’s optics.

Through the makeshift infirmary Knock Out retreated, in uncharacteristic silence so deep that he did not even mutter or groan about disappearing into the masses. Instead he slipped by and his thoughts echoed with an unfettered worry.  _‘What… if they find out?’_

* * *

The conversational tracks were changed with only a moment's hesitation from Orion, who tried to push back and retreat to a familial distance. However, Megatron held the youngling there, with his field flickered around them both.

Megatron had not then come to understand the secrets of the trinkets, not for some time yet to come. That singular sol cycle had passed without much more discovery, other than that Orion longed to explore the caverns, or that noises that scurried beyond their chambers echoed across the carved out walls. Despite any heeds of caution, Megatron could see the edges of his control slip through. Someday, Orion would brave the threat and dare outward; sparkfelt protectiveness lanced through him. However, Megatron silenced the other warnings or declaration for commanded obedience; best to see what came of the young one’s curiosity.

Their world was a dangerous one. Energon flowed and flooded through the lattice worked depths of Cybertron, but life returned with a primal ferocity and the cities had not been reconstructed out of the ashes. When their kind had vacated to the stars and sought refuge elsewhere, Maximals and other technobeasts flourished and preyed on the dwindling survivors that had been left in the ruins. Megatron had watched and listened to Orion describe the far-away noises that emanated out of the depths, like scurrying needles dragging along stone and alloy, joined with the gnaw of carnivorous teeth.

“Scraplets,” he informed, and warned Orion not to venture in the direction of where the swarm may lurk.

Without much choice other than to recede into the mine’s depths, Megatron forged for their energon and scraped it out of Cybertron’s crust. Reluctant as the crystals were to surrender, Megatron knew better than to venture towards the abundant waves of Primus’ blood, whose depths had flooded the Underworld. Shamed and in exile, the tyrant had his recompense that pulled him to return from whence it all began. Autobots would guard the surface level rivers and greater creatures survived in the Underworld — a realm that tamed the Pits by comparison, and leave him to etch out the crystalized fuel embedded into hardened alloy.

So, on the next cycle Megatron turned to his task and wrenched their precious energon with hard work and toiled efforts. Cycles came to follow, and in that span he slowly learned the mysteries of Orion and his junkyard scraps.

They were toys to his newspark. Not in the sense of a human child, those loud, obnoxious weaker forms of a weaker race. No, but the stimulation that Megatron and his hovel could not provide. Sparks of friction flew by Megatron’s helm as he followed a vein of energon, his thoughts divided between the careful task of mining — pressure, structural integrity, energy readings — and the thoughts that pushed him back onto the development of his charge.

Primus had ordained onto him the task of moulding Orion into the Prime ‘that Cybertron needed.’ Megatron knew that he was to guard and protect, but how could he prepare a youngling to become one of the greatest mechs that ever existed?

Just the thought made Megatron snarl again, not only because he had begun to come to terms with his extra duty, but that he even acknowledged Prime’s enormity of character and integrity. As the foil to all that Prime did, Megatron felt himself measured from the moment they stepped into Cybertron’s light as somehow smaller in the sights of many Cybertronians. Orion Pax had never wanted to marshal the sparks and frames or others, and yet while Megatron used every measure within his disposal, the Autobots arose in the archivist’s name as if somehow ordained with a skill of leadership that was Megatron never quite grasped.

Together they wielded cults of personalities: Megatron’s through intimidation and charisma, and Orion came out of quixotic bravery, wisdom, and deprecated integrity that the Decepticons suffered accusations of deficiency from the very top of its leadership.

Great energon-fueled axe sparked from command through its neural link up with the miner, and the powered thruster erupted and slammed into the rock face with the ferocity of Megatron’s angry surge. Despite his short fallings, no matter the oppression and lack of character he may have had, he would never dismiss the right that he and those of whom that followed to break the yoke placed around all their necks.

Their war was just, at least… it began that way. In the end, prideful lust for power had turned their venerable cause for insurrection into an attrition against all they languished.

Equality was cast aside for vengeance, and the Decepticons became an instrument of tyranny without peace.

And Megatron had allowed it, encouraged it, festered it into a cancerous wound that ate away at their fiber.

Again and again the axe tore at planetary alloy, sheered off the bed of rock, and sent forth sparks of sympathetic anger with each strike. Each move came closer and closer to the small vein, a pulsing crystalline facet that agitated the oppressive shadows with the same hue that stared up at him with resonate trust.

Energon blue.

One strike and the vein would charge, ignited into a fiery explosion and Megatron knew the cavern would not hold.

One snarl and it silenced the distant cybercritters that grew used to the noisy efforts of the miner.

One spark flew towards his face, white-hot with a ferocity to match Megatron’s rage, and he finally stopped to seethe at the imbedded tool. No destruction came else that day, and Megatron heaved his armor with a reluctance that his actions had not brought down the entirety of the mine upon him and all the residents that lurked in the shadows — including Orion.

With a great yank he pulled back the axe and watched crystalline fragments cascade out of the bank, the largest loose and rattled with a few touches of his servos. It would be more than enough for another two sol cycles, and more than enough to return home.

Megatron did not want the responsibility of carving a Prime out of the youngling. Once more Primus received his damnation, but the god would not have listened even if the voice cried out through the chamber walls.

Without remorse for the civil war he started, Megatron’s great lament was his frustration at lacking whatever it was that favored so many for Prime, and condemn him by repose. Megatron had wanted to marshal others into war, a war for civility and equality. Instead, he drew in the dregs, the scraplets of society no better than he in violence and yet they seemed unable to defy what had not been given to them. Perhaps it had been that Orion Pax came from an intellectual caste, where his mind was nourished even if oppressed; none of the less, it had shaped them into difference and Megatron was left with a shame that repulsed him.

Large thunderous steps drudged him through the labyrinth. By formation and by necessity of strategy, Megatron’s path was anything but direction. Just the same, his thoughts were not ready to spy the sterling little youngling.

That mind within there was connected to a spark promised to become a Prime, but that promise could only be fulfilled if he was shaped into becoming what came so naturally. Megatron began to see failings at every level, and the sight disgusted him. He wanted to demand to fate, Primus, and those that carved his world what made him so unworthy of being the same.

What had he lacked? Orion never wanted it, but Megatron did… and should it not go to whomever wanted it the most?

Orion lacked in the same, by the benefit of his dependence. Yet, when Megatron finally entered to watch the cyan bright gaze peer up at him, none of the condemnation was found there. Instead, he found same trust he ached to push and break. More of the toys were scattered around, their slow use shifting as the younger bot explored the ways in which they kept his mind.

That mind, which paled Megatron by comparison — how ever he could ensure it lived up to the legacy of the first incarnation? A legacy that held over a dependency on him for its fulfillment?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megatron begins to be proactive on his duties as guardian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _{{ This is voice-over commlink. }}_   
>  `This is computerized text.`
> 
> * * *
> 
> Thank you to Andromeda_Prime for beta-reading, and who was also a sounding board of support along side Zuzeca and Reyairia. 
> 
> Alright, I am trying to keep a log of my chapter’s logs a bit better. So, this is written as I am writing the chapter, and some things might no longer entirely fit the accuracy of what is developed.
> 
> View chapter notes on my tumblr blog: [Chap 4 notes](http://primeling.tumblr.com/post/98786081848).

Legacy and the prospect of its fulfillment continued to dwell on Megatron’s mind throughout his recharge. The darkness of the caves were eternal, only pushed back by the length of lantern’s beams, and Megatron had come to expect the peaceful silence well. In recharge it became calmer, when even some of the beasts beyond their hovel joined in needed rest. Yet, on that cycle something passed over both Megatron and the smaller bot beside him. Disturbance transitioned between them both, fed back and forth between their fields. Even long ago, when the lively mines were fresh within his gladiator mind as he strode across the threshold of the arena, Megatron had learned the innate serenity of Orion Pax. It followed the archivist wherever he went, and rolled off the blue-and-red bot as mercury on glass. Now in his iteration of their relationship, Megatron wondered if the haunted doubt and commiseration festered into a plague that caused Orion to toss in his slumber.

Megatron hated the night as it dragged on, for in its silence that only lifted in their activity as Hadeen rose on the outside, thoughts percolated into articulated spears. Their cyberology had indicated that recharge was a necessity, and yet it avoided them for the cruelty of thoughts. Fortunately for one, no matter how much he squirmed on the slab beside his guardian, at least the younger bot took to some version of rest.

The fulfillment of Primus’ promise within Orion Pax haunted Megatron same as the distant rumble of unidentified Maximals and other beasts that lurked in their labyrinthian home. Only when at last Orion had found his peace, curled towards Megatron in complete trust, did the guardian once more find an intermittent mend in the restlessness. Waves of bygone placidity washed off the would-be Archivist, and Megatron’s brain module flickered through a miasma of thoughts before surrendered to a last sigh before the deep dark took him in.

Relief came and Megatron recharged through the dull terrors of his terrible thoughts, each more familiar than the one next or before; his family of demons.

Shadowy silence over Cybertron broke at the crested dawn, but its illumination was denied to those within the valleyed mine, and Hadeen’s cool glow could not reach the depths where they dwelt. Yet the internal chronometers clicked away the crawl of time with warning. Together the two depended on the cycle and pattern of each, and neither was more likely than the other to first rise. Orion had on that day, likely due to the greater rest achieved and the lack of burden placed upon his shoulders. It had been the withdrawal of his warm and allay electromagnetic field that disturbed Megatron.

The absence of the companion by his side was colder and harsher than the trepidity of his fitful recharge, and the occupants that dwelled in its depths. With a great echoed groan off the cavern's walls, Megatron announced his heedful state. To a bask of dim light he awoke, already set to flame by Orion’s doing.

Their little dwelling mimicked the early dawn, still sleepy from the cycle before, and yet cast into a cool hue of radiant shades that spread out into the metallic world beneath. Below the surface, the energon lamps flickered with unsteady abandon, save for the few that had been best preserved in the course of the war. Orion looked less small then in the claustrophobic scene, with his spread of trinkets between his leg struts, and his bright optics adding to the ambience that illuminated the small world.

Megatron watched as his systems slowly began to heat up from the cool; it was important not to shock after recharge, and the hard start-ups always collected a price paid on the neurological entity beneath their robotic superstructures. Unlike before, when Cybertron had been littered with battles and sieges, Megatron took his opportunities to relish that slower burn of charge pushed outwards through his protoform and into his extremities. Rather than kick his fuel-pump into top gear, it patiently drove energon out of his multiple tanks and into the conversion systems. From there the power-downed systems took hold of the heat and life that infected his; with a great flex of his curved pauldrons, Megatron reminded himself that he was alive… gloriously, unrelentingly, and without the cold nature that organics felt when they saw them.

Spread out before him, a littered display on the floor at his pedes, Megatron watched as Orion glanced up at him and cast a smile, then withdrew his watch with only a fade to his soft expression. Digits worked to fiddle with the broken amenities, the forgotten trash that had now become a precious token of Orion’s innocent nature.

Unable to beguile himself into begrudging Orion’s countenance, Megatron found himself across the distance and then positioned his heavier frame in place of the emptiness by the youngling's side. Trust still found him then, when Orion’s small fins twitched forward in interest; the motion garnered a rusty smile from the exiled warlord, who remembered the small movements that displayed the archivist’s emotions in the past.

Only a few ever caught the gesture, and fewer yet were aware when the Prime’s audial antennae did the same. Megatron, however, knew the motion and the meaning behind them. The three pairs always moved in harmony, and yet their configuration betrayed the bot’s varied array of masked emotions and thoughts. With how they were now, the renounced Decepticon knew that the smaller companion simply felt no alarm, and was entirely in comfort.

Consequences of the fiery wall within Orion’s psyche began to well on Megatron. Hypothesis began to brew in his processors, that foretold of what dwelled behind the barrier and the results of its collapse; behind the flames lay the retained self of Orion’s truth, and with it came the past that was behind them all. There among them now, Megatron was left to ponder whether such a revelation would just give the knowledge of the history or if with its return would come his great nemesis to assert itself once more. Or would Optimus Prime’s memories only seep into Orion and taint him with the burden placed on the Autobot?

Megatron had to question and he had to wonder if Orion’s innocence came from within and from the action of amnesia; the spark would remember, though, Orion had always been incorruptible against the terrors of the world around. Even as the rust settled into their society, and a burgeoning revolutionary stepped out from behind the Hall’s shelves, Megatron had seen how the worst of their society brought out the best in Orion.

Unlike himself…

A small glint of light gave excuse, and Megatron plucked a bit of broken glass and held it between his claws to examine the play of light across its surface. There was danger in his touch, and he had been cognizant of it.

“The lamps have grown darker,” Orion’s voice was deep and soft as ever. Although smaller than his form as Prime, the archivist still had a voice as baritone as ever, only one that lifted with a lilt of freedom.

Freedom.

Megatron flinched his gaze onto the bot, who had come to stare at him. A puzzling set of tools were laid out, and whatever his charge had done, Megatron was still baffled how this trash heap could entertain such a thirsty mind.

Noncommittally, Megatron gave a grunt and let gravity reclaim the bit of broken glass he held, and then shuffled through the rest to find another token of distraction.

Part of him, smaller in the cycles before, had become hung up then on the tempestuous action of their past encounter, when he had faced his desire to strike at the young Orion out of anger and frustration. In return, Orion continued to stare at him without a flinch and the trust remained.

Unearned trust.

In the night just past and those before, stray thoughts came and went that dwelled on the curious matter of how Megatron longed for the furious defiance of the Prime rather than the sweetness of Orion’s company. Optimus understood what he had become, and even in the heat of battle and the brief exchange before the Prime’s sacrifice, Megatron felt a comfort in seeing how readily his opponent and brother accepted him then. It had, in much of the past, always been about acceptance.

War had made criminals of them all, yet none so monstrous as Megatron himself. Bit by bit the barnacles of that retched planet fell beneath his pedes. Cast off in death, they were a pestilent reminder of the mangled monster he had transformed into. Megatron had taken pride in how he had stood up and dragged himself out of the depths of the mines, taken a name and claimed it as his own. The criminal syndicates that ruled the Kaonian colosseum and enslaved their main attraction — the gladiators — were taken over by his cunning determination and righteous wrath. To Cybertron at large his sights had been set, and he saw a people that he alone could free.

When at first he met the archivist face to face, Megatron knew right away the trepidation that peered back at him with bright optics; he was a known criminal, a violent ruffian known for his prowess in death matches. At that time, Megatron took great consideration to prove to his Iaconian contact within the Hall of Records the lack of threat he posed to him then. When Orion felt safety, Orion felt comfort, and Orion opened up the full magnitude of his mind and spark.

Medium in build and lacking of armor, Orion had a forceful personality that gracefully ensnared many around him. Megatron loved how the bot would stand up and defy him, call him out for his ignorance and challenge him with an intelligence few offered. It had made Megatron better then, and once it was gone… he was smaller, he was lesser, and Megatron the tyrant took the place of the revolutionary gladiator that—

They had a brotherly love then, and something more and undefined. Megatron had hungered to be taken into the depths of the little defiant archivist, to see the expanse of Orion’s mind and find a light that never reached the mine's depths. Of course, the reality of their stations loomed over them, and while Megatron had thrown himself into the passionate exchange slipped into the Grid’s datastream, never once had Orion admitted the affair they shared. Nothing physical, although Megatron knew he craved it thus, but everything else pointed to liaison worthy of epic sonnets.

Few knew why Megatron and Optimus stood with such passion across the battlefield; only a small number remembered the friendship by the time the world went dark, and fewer of those admitted that under it all remained a kindling that fueled their amorous betrayal.

Optimus Prime was a force to reckon with. Although a veneer of disciple kept him composed, the voice was only monotone to those who failed to listen and watch. Megatron had never once lost his ability to get to the root of what his brother thought and felt; not even the battle mask could hide Optimus from him. With the same ferocious personality that enamored Megatron to the archivist in the past, now paired with a towering titan’s frame, Prime was worthy of his respect, and commanded it without question. Weaponry only topped off the ferocity of Optimus’ forceful presence, for skill now measured the will behind it.

Even then, Megatron was drawn to Optimus, and whatever hatred he had only fueled the passion to crave what was denied.

Megatron lived and felt alive to see Optimus Prime stand before him as the one immovable object to threaten him; no one else was worthy. As the war escalated Megatron’s transformation into a tyrannical despot, and Unicron turned his armor to reflect the monster within, always had the Prime stood guard.

In his sights he watched the sharpened talons of his claws play with rays of light, and he thought of the danger they posed. A cycle of abuse began to spiral out of control, particularly after he had come to work with Starscream. The craven Seeker brought out the worst in Megatron, and their ambitions fed together into internal destruction, yet on the outside it meant a means of crushing the Autobot forces.

To their enemies, Starscream and Megatron made a wonderful pair. Yet, Megatron had come to know that within… it destroyed his spark and made him a terrible blight.

Starscream, although a force in the air and a dastardly brilliant tactical mind, never posed a real threat to him without a means of situation. It brought out the very worst in Megatron, who took pleasure in dishing out punishment with violent repose on a mecha that could never truly defend himself. He loved to see the fear and hatred burn within those beady optics; it festered it, and it made it grow.

After having been freed at spark of Unicron’s oppressive possession, Megatron’s renouncement of his tyranny had been true and perhaps just. Yet, it was fragile, and to hear Starscream promise a renewed war taken to a level that the Autobots had never seen tested its metal; Megatron was determined that though he might bend, he would not break his vow, for honor was all he had left and the little bot in his care.

The temptations had been so sweet and yet so poisonous; pride stood up beside him, in Starscream’s voice, and it tried to drag him back down into the cycle that he had thusly wished to end.

If Megatron had struck Orion, to take advantage of their despairing difference of physical power, then the once righteous gladiator knew that it would be over. He would have failed then, right before it began. Orion was small and weak in frame, and although gifted with a mind that even Megatron could hardly comprehend, it was his dependency that could not be preyed upon. That had been done with Starscream, and Starscream did rightly to him. They needed each other during the course of the war; Megatron had been a means of achieving higher station for Starscream, and Starscream’s Vosnian prestige brought in the fliers that changed the course of their war.

Megatron found silent prayers on his thoughts that willed for Optimus Prime to already replace the wide-opticed Pax.

The taste for oppression had been lost, but the addiction had not been won. Megatron felt that Prime might be the only force more immovable than the momentum of Megatron’s abusive streak.

Megatron had no desire to get in touch with his inner warlord, no matter how sensual the illicit contact could be. For if he had ever reached out and touched Orion, taken advantage of his greater weakness, then whatever that simple and grand promise that Primus gave to him… it would be lost.

This penance he paid was not his redemption, but merely the price paid for having led a war and freed Unicron. For Megatron alone carried the same weighted knowledge that without his tyranny, without his ambitions… Optimus Prime would not have surrendered his spark so that Cybertron might live.

Megatron stared at Orion then, and remembered the look of relieved lament on Prime’s face when he refused Starscream. At last, Megatron had turned away from his path, and although it could have meant the reunion of the once ambitious affair, time had run out.

_If only…_

_If only…_

Regret gave meaning without the pain of hindsight.

Over the cold orifice of his servo’s weapon he curled a fist, but not to strike at Orion or anything else. Rather, in determination that he find a new path and act upon it. Orion was his task, his charge, and the dependency unfairly placed upon Megatron was a righteous comeuppance for the transgressions he'd committed against Cybertron and his friend.

To his full height he rose, and stretched the cydraulic lines until the rubber-like material burned with painful satisfaction. A roll of his shoulders and his glossa, an announcement came. “Come; although I have etched fuel from these old mines, it is a limited supply and our efficiency is unacceptable.”

Obediently, Orion rose on his own pedes and stared up at his massive height and asked, “Where will we go?”

“We will go to Kaon. The city is still mostly deserted and still very derelict. Until the Autobots set their sights on progressing away from Iacon, we mostly have freedom within its limits,” he said.

Quick to catch, Orion asked as thus expected, “Who are the Autobots?”

Who indeed was the question, and Megatron was not prepared for the full explanation. Orion would have to know in time, and the lessons would have to be spread out. The truth was painful, and small pricks over time inflicted less damage in the immediacy.

So, he said simply as they stepped into the cavern’s path towards the exit, “They were once my enemies. Right now they dwell on the surface and are rebuilding parts of Cybertron that had been destroyed during a civil war that decimated our people’s population towards extinction and leveled much above. This is why we live in the caves, Orion, because I am in exile as their former enemy.”

Silence followed while Orion processed the dump of information; although smaller than the whole, Megatron gave up and told as much as he did to at least give into honesty. In the past he had learned not to lie to Orion, not without heavy consequences; the archivist always figured things out.

“Are they my enemies?” Of all the questions to be asked, Orion’s immediate inquiry somehow managed to surprise the old warlord.

Bowed into a lower spool of tunnels, Megatron grunted and admitted, “No, but they are mine. They would not understand why I am your guardian or why you are here, so we stay in exile. Do you understand?”

“No,” Orion dropped his admission of incomprehension readily enough, and the acceptance seemed to suit him. Upwards toward the first exit of the old mines they approached, into tunnels that were built for movement of troops towards the greater city. Megatron knew the way by instinct and by experience; he was built at the spark-level to navigate the subterranean hemisphere, and felt at ease within the trapped depths.

Conversation went silent for a while, and Orion accepted the reticence of his guardian. At least, the acceptance came with limitations. Eventually, he began again and the questions at least addressed what Megatron had hidden in exile from.

“You were at war with the Autobots?”

A nod from Megatron, who focused most of his primary processing power of tracking their movement within the tunnels.

“Who… were you fighting alongside? Who were your allies and the enemies of the Autobots?”

Megatron would have faltered, had his spark had flared to ignite the brand Unicron moulded on his chassis. He longed to see the emblem of his Decepticon brand, although not necessarily out of pride entirely. Part of him felt it might be a scarlet letter burned into his thoracic plates.

Oh yes, Megatron was a xenophobic despot, but he was also a learned one. Ignorance of humanity’s greater culture had not entirely made him too ignorant. There was some parts he liked, including the little equine entertainment vids that sang and spoke of friendship; he smiled without explanation, and missed the antics of Pinkie Pie and her friends.

Then it — his expression — disappeared and the bright vermillion optics cast a sideways glance towards Orion. In the past, the little archivist had infected Megatron with a thirst for reading. It expanded his vocabulary’s repertoire and given him a greater leg to command respect from the upper classes with their intellectual elitism. Never one to be left behind by Prime’s intellect, when Megatron realized with sudden epiphany that Optimus was likely scouring the literature of the world beneath and in an attempt to spitefully learn what his arch-rival saw in the pathetic world, Megatron found himself scouring through their Grid works dubbed as classics — which likely appealed to the intellectual snobbery of the former archivist.

While he could take the archivist out of the library, he could not take the librarian out of the archivist.

Thus, Megatron stumbled his way through a few works of Earth’s literature, and while not entirely unimpressed, it at least solicited a field of reference that came to him once in a while. Personally, Megatron found himself more in love with the political thrillers, and felt a guilty pleasure that soon spread to the other Decepticons; they thought he didn't know.

Engines spluttered with muffled laughter; just as Optimus had said, Megatron should have perhaps spent more time in the library.

As if to read his mind and bring it back to the forefront, Orion repeated himself and drew Megatron out of the inner monologue; he had become so used to the internal conversations in his exiled time.

“The Autobots fought against a force called the Decepticons,” Megatron answered so plainly. In his exchanged vision locked with Orion, he dared the image of his past to ask further.

Orion so dared to, and the next question came with an innocent curiosity that tilted his helm with the weight of its implication, “What happened to the Decepticons?”

Megatron heard the piper’s song to his back, and paid it in installments. “The Decepticons were victorious in their efforts and drove the Autobots off Cybertron.” Silent was his amendment at the victory had been initial.

“So, then why are the Autobots here?”

“The Decepticons were relentless and chased the Autobots into deepest part of space, where the tide of the war was turned against them. In the end, small fragments of each faction came to a distant world far from here, and it was there that the Autobots had their last stand. Although small and weaker, luck favored them—” Megatron’s spark flickered with reposed pain, and phantoms drove the Star Saber back through his armored plates. Their steps echoed and drowned out the words, but Megatron admitted, “To the victor goes to the spoilers, Orion. They will write a history to sing their praises, and the Decepticons will fall further than out of favor. They will be remembered as the scourge of our world.”

Righteous indignation overcame Megatron, and obviously it was picked up by the mecha in his company.

“So… who was the guilty party?”

“Guilt goes both ways, Orion. Neither the Autobots nor the Decepticons are without blame. No matter what version of history you read, remember that faults lay at both their feet. Before you pass any judgment, learn from the side of the other. You are the makings of an archivist, and you are not to become biased on the basis of another. Learn history for what it is wholesomely, not by the version of either side,” Megatron said. He remembered the tellings of Orion Pax, who exclaimed the pious duties of his caste.

Those of whom had guarded the Hall of Records and toiled under Cybertron’s Chief Archivist were the ones who harvested the sowed information of their world, and in it came a guardianship over the history of their world. Frustration came in Alpha Trion’s apprentice when the long-time acolyte began to see the Council’s machination try to twist the world’s history in the image of their desires; ultimately proven to be a valid warning sign to Orion, who lived to preserve accuracy and root out erratums.

“I will learn this history? It seems to have so much, I do not see how I could learn of this war or this world I exist in, Megatron, not from our mines. I am sheltered there, even if I am safe and with you." Even in the flickered shadows, Megatron could make out the first emergence of frustration in the body language of his charge.

“You are correct, Orion. The mines are no place for you to find the answers you seek, this is why I bring you to Kaon.”

“What is in Kaon?”

Red pierced the dark, and fought purchase in unrelenting beams of cyan-blue that connected between them. Megatron felt a satisfaction in his decision then. “The Kaon Hall of Records. No where near the magnitude to Iacon’s Archives; however, it will suit the purpose of accessing many of the answers you seek. You’ll get other questions, Orion, and do not fear to delve in deep. What you do not find here satisfactory, do not dismiss it. I will not have your naiveté be your folly. There are those that will come to take advantage of your ignorance, and others that will claim I do the same.”

Orion stopped dead in his tracks, and a look of determination hardened his softer features. Megatron could not explain why his statement would be found so disdainful to the smaller bot, at least, not until Orion spoke again.

“You will not take advantage of me. I saw you that other cycle, when you almost rose your hand to strike me. I saw you refuse your internal vices, Megatron. I do not know who would claim such a thing, but they will be in error. You are my guardian, you have done nothing else than to protect me,” he announced in bolder tones that others would have yelled.

Such confidence in him that had briefly been passed over in the shock that Orion had been aware of Megatron’s indiscretion, and seen to contemplate it. Then, the subsequent faith finally came to him. While Orion stood a little taller, Megatron bowed to the implication.

“I see,” he said, having come to look behind him and towards Orion.

The first sight of Optimus had stood up then, in the vision of Orion’s past countenance; the little sassy glitch was back already, and slowly morphing the gullible newspark into the familiar archivist that dared to defy Megatron the Master Gladiator.

“I am glad you do, Megatron,” Orion’s whisper was light and soft, in contrast to the resolved curl of his servo by his side into a fist. Then, he resumed his steps until he surpassed where Megatron stood. “I would like to see this library. There is so much I do not know and understand. There are words in my linguistic database that are defined without context, and I wish to satisfy that error.”

“Our trek is longer still, Orion.”

“You stated that transformation is the Cybertronian nature. Why do we not take our vehicle modes to trek faster?”

Megatron snorted in amusement, for it found respite in Orion’s avidity. “These tunnels are too small for my flight mode and I walk far faster than you do, Orion.”

“Then, the solution appears to be that I take my secondary mode so that we accelerate to a greater velocity.” Orion paused and in the silence Megatron could already hear the first initial response of the internal mechanisms click as gears shifted towards the transformation sequence.

Yet, nothing prepared him to the words that followed from Orion’s proclamation. It was a command, and so similar to what others had heard in bygone times. “Roll out, Megatron.”

Cacophonously shifted plates ended the command then, and Orion’s medium-built ground mode resounded across the hollowed walls in youthful abandon, then began to take speed and build distance behind him.

Megatron was behind in shock, then by the time Orion was several paces ahead, he growled in some ironic humor, “I am no Autobot, archivist.”

* * *

Somewhere off into the distance, the Nemesis had become a refuge for the uneasy Decepticons that had come to try and live among the Autobots, and yet had never forgotten where once their allegiance lay. The once beacon of Decepticons had become a place of ruins, spat out in the vicinity of the Well, and derelict of all its begotten pride.

Knock Out surveyed the empty medbay that he used to occupy; a kingdom of his domain to reign, now a hollowed carapace of ruin. There were little mementos of their height, and the might that the shadow of the warship cast wherever it transgressed. Now it was broken, with glass that littered all over, and twisted metal turned to wretched slag.

The Autobots somehow never wanted to return to the Nemesis, but at least Knock Out couldn’t blame them. Although it had been a means of returning life to Cybertron, its reign of terror was still a greater blight than its act of restitution. The drones came here readily enough when commanded or asked — the difference depended on who was behind them, but Knock Out was more the one to come.

Not just to raid the medical storage facilities, or to remove equipment as needed. It was also where he came to think, and ponder where he had come. Knock Out just wasn’t used to thinking internally too much, or trying to think before the commitment of action. It was just that… times were different, now that the Autobots were victorious. They weren’t exactly cruel, but they were slow and reluctant to forgive in differing measure.

Knock Out did not want to be subjected to his past anymore than he wanted to relive the treatment bestowed upon him. To call Starscream a jerk was an understatement, and it had rather made the betrayal a bit easier to swallow. The Autobots had to ask him if it was just so sudden; none of them knew how neutral Knock Out had initially been on the onslaught of the conflict. They also didn’t know that he might enjoy a good vivisection, but it was in the theory of medicine that he really wanted.

All right, Knock Out knew that what he wanted most was to be accepted and to be approved as an added bonus to the safety that either allegiance had to offer. Breakdown had done it well enough, with his cyberpup-like admiration and obedience, and it made the less than favorable treatment of Megatron and his immediate underlings a little easier to intake. But, once Breakdown was gone, the fondness and comfort within the Decepticon ranks began to lose its shine.

Knock Out did like shininess.

As he scoured the wreckage, he referred to the datapad perched on an old work station. On it was a list of items that they needed back at the hospital center; Ratchet hadn’t sent him there, just rambled into one of his old tangents before announcing that Knock Out never listened.

Truth was, Knock Out always did listen. He knew that the harder he worked and the better he performed for the Autobots, the more likely they were to keep him once the DJD finally answered the hail for all Cybertronians to return. Even though Megatron had renounced the Decepticon cause and ordered its abandonment, Knock Out knew well enough that no one like that dreadful band of terrible Cons would do any such thing.

But, the Autobots proved themselves and he kind of liked them. Bumblebee and Smokescreen were lots of fun to hang out with, and Knock Out realized that out of the entire bunch, the young racers had accepted him the most.

“Primus, this place is a wreck and I’m getting filthy,” Knock Out wanted someone else to talk to, but all he had were ghosts of the past to hear him.

* * *

When at last he caught up, Megatron voiced through their commlinks his belayed retort,  _{{ Don’t get too far ahead, Orion. You do not know the way. }}_

Trusting obedience came then, as Orion only occasionally slipped past Megatron’s position as they weaved through the tunnels. When the tunnels came to intersect with the underground conveyance tracks, the tunnels became larger and far more consistent.

Down the center of the tunnels they followed; these were the railroad tracks that served the industrial sectors of the city, and later the Decepticon movement. The same tracks that enabled movement within the city’s underground now let them back to the epicenter of the Decepticon uprising. Through an industrial complex their emergency was found, and Megatron knowingly braced himself for the stark contrast of Hadeen’s mid-sol light compared to the darker illumination of their familiar subterranean domain.

Megatron, who had lived in the dark of Cybertron’s mines for far longer than he had basked in the glory of his followers' adulations, knew to click his optics’ internal aperture mechanisms to the lowest setting possible. To remember this first ascension, Megatron turned his back towards the high-crested sun and watched the smaller Orion as he first took in the radiant shafts cast down by Hadeen.

Optics squinted hard, blinded momentarily by the intensity of their star in contrast to the sheltered world below. To shield his vision and the delicate receptors under all the myriad of configured lenses, Orion raised a servo to cast a shadow on his face.

Megatron had to wonder what Primus would do when Hadeen went cold, when their world was far too chilly for even their own kin.

While his secondary thoughts were circulating the contemplative relationship between their world and its solar star, Megatron gave a warning that passed over his shoulder as he turned back towards the cityscape's path. “Give your optics a moment to adjust. There is a lower setting that will constrict your aperture and limit the amount of light you take in. The more light your lenses take in, the most exposure your optical circuitry will take; do not let them burn out — I do not have easy access to a replacement for you, and I highly doubt we will find doctor skilled enough to replace them as well as the ones you were sparked with.” Megatron leveled the tempo of his pedes and Orion fell into a double-step harmony.

“It is just so… bright in comparison to the lamps,” Orion remarked.

Megatron’s thoughts instantly went to the irony. For once, he gave it voice, “You are fortunate then, youngling. I spent a few cycles on a distant world with a far younger star and burned almost twice as bright as Hadeen.”

Hadeen cast a dark gold hue onto Cybertron’s surface, shifting with each Vorn closer to the red spectrum; a symptom of age, their world’s antiquity showed not only in the progression of their star’s shift, but insidious changes that Cybertronian biology gave them belayed resistance to, and that humanity had no comprehension for. Earth was host to a race of weaklings that spread across its surface, down to the very roots. Even now, even with the progress of his so-called redemption — Megatron snorted in ironic disgust at the thought; the denounced warlord still thought that perhaps the entirety of their universe would have been better if Prime had just allowed him to cyberform Earth in their image.

Of course, now he began to ponder if perhaps such a nefarious conquest would have also equipped Unicron with a brand new planetary body. After all, Megatron’s frame, though considerably smaller frame in proportion to the grandeur to the Gods, had been enough to unleash vengeance. Earth’s circumference may have been half the size of Cybertron’s entirety, but its transformation may have spelled certain doom for the weakened Cybertron.

Orion had caught on quick that Hadeen was their sun; what he had no context for was Earth or why anyone had been there. They walked across the surface of their world, in a desolate city carved out and built into the surface of a grand canyon, but the veracious mind of the inner archivist would never be so satisfied without more.

“What was this world so distant from ours?” Orion always wanted to know and understand more, never satisfied with the comprehension given; nothing could be taken for granted by the small one.

With a steady swing of his arms, Megatron continued their meandering path, which would eventually lead them out of the industrial sector. While questions would come and dialogue would be exchanged, the guardian took small satisfaction that Orion had begun to assert himself into his sparked nature, even if that meant an interrogation for information.

So Megatron dutifully gave his answer while they navigated the unsteady debris, and he listened for any signs of threatening predators that lurked in the devastation. “The world was called Earth — ridiculous name, they might have just called it dirt, which would have made sense. The world was covered in it.”

“They?”

“The natives; they were called humans. Organic species, and small in size. One of their largest inhabitants would have easily fit in your servo. Of course, they thought themselves so wise and equal to us. Really, their race is only a few million years old, and even their sun is an infant in comparison to ours. It gave the most blinding yellow that burned almost white mid-day, and all that did was make the dirt dusty and the humidity cling to our metal.” Fondness was little as he thought of the planet.

Megatron hated the oceans the most. The water was full of salt, and had the most parasitic of any animal lifeforms. It clung to him and its salty winds made the Nemesis rust. Then there had been the experience of his watery tomb at the great depths, and the hubris life that tried to turn his armor into their own image. Unicron was no matter, to have twisted him and rendered him a puppet on knotted stringers.

Silence had fallen between them, occupied by the thoughts that dwelled on Megatron’s mind, and the observation of Orion beside him. When at last he was pulled out of the memory of his cold tomb, Megatron glanced on occasion to the bot beside him.

More and more he could see the archivist he had known. Now the medium-built mech had begun to use all his senses to record the details around. Megatron wondered about the progression, and remembered the discussions of personal schematics exchanged in private. Orion Pax had been reluctant to share with the gladiator his natural ability to transcribe conversation and events around, to record onto internal databases, and to render the visual events to wireframe structures available for later rendering. Soundwave was a high-definition machine of records, but Orion was an auditor of events that keep internal records.

Without an external method of depositing the sensory archives, Orion’s databanks would eventually purge to make way for newer data. Megatron felt a compulsion to give the would-be archivist the equipment necessary.

In the lengthy distance from Kaon’s worn-out industrial district towards the epicenter of cultural collection, Megatron tried to point out a few of the landmarks still discernible from the destruction, and explain the gaps of major rest.

Not once had they passed a single statue in his image, and Megatron was never more relieved for that. Small favors came in unusual methods, for when Megatron spied the empty plinth where his once great colossus visage stood, so too followed Orion’s ignorance of what the abandoned altar meant. Somewhere in it the unscarred reflection of his empty facial plates peered out under the rubbish; the Autobots had begun to wipe his memorials off their world. Fate favored him from the prying queries of Orion, whose line of sight followed the sight of Kaon’s remains, and thus he missed the sight of Megatron’s likeness peering through the debris.

At last they came upon the city’s Hall of Records that still stood in stark relief against the devastation inflicted on Kaon. In all, the city had fared far better than the other Autobot-occupied metropolises, and still ruin had flooded its streets and drowned the pride of its occupants.

“The integrity of this complex appears to have survived… better than much of the city,” Orion’s voice already began to relent to the mild lament, and in the catch of their gaze, Megatron could see the first signs of remorse.

That was when Megatron realized: he knew. The little youngling knew that this was the doing of war.

“The Decepticons had no need to ruin a library, and in any siege, the Autobots would have never dared to have destroyed one of the libraries,” he stated, as he stepped over a fallen shelf and its scattered pile of engrams.

“Why were the Autobots so reverent of a library? If it had any interest to the Decepticons, should they have not eliminated it as a target?” Innocence came and the natural strategy of his old enemy began to reveal just how naturally it came to Prime’s programming.

Megatron, however, answered without the commentary with his explanation. “The Autobot’s Supreme Commander had been a librarian before he had become a military leader. The Decepticons may not have respected him because of whence he came, but the Autobots upped their reverence… sometimes just to spite their enemies' mockery.”

“But—”

Whatever could be asked, Megatron swung around and pointed a scolding digits towards Orion. “Learn this now, little bot: Anyone from any place can be your greatest enemy… and your greatest friend. Don’t let the place they come from dictate how you see them. See them for what they are, other else you may be the source of your own lies.”

Orion’s face had expressed an intense perplexity, while he stood shock-still with several strewn datapads under his pedes. “Ye-yes, Megatron.”

Satisfied, Megatron continued to the inner levels of the archive’s complex, and led Orion down into the Amphitheater, and one of the most preserved sections of the entire city.

Bowled under the surface, the massive spherical room was lined with network superengrams that linked to a holographic uplink and crossed with several mainframes, the greatest of which had once been the Grid. On a few occasions, Orion had gained access for Megatron to slip into Kaon’s amphitheater after the city’s archivists had gone into night shift, and shown him the product of laborious research. As grand as Kaon’s had been, Megatron had gleaned from the glimmer in Orion’s optic just how small it compared to Iacon’s Grande Amphitheater, and even the series of standard amphitheaters were still of splendor befitting of Cybertron’s jeweled city of lights.

With a gesture he bowed for Orion to pass him, to cross onto the catwalk towards the specialized console used by the archivists.

Images depicting Alpha Trion behind the Grande Amphitheater were carved into hieroglyphic reliefs on the structure’s caved struts, blended in with the artistic flurry of the superengrams. Each packed data as densely as a mecha’s brain-module, and had been turned into illuminations down to the exterior circuitry.

“This is the access center of the library. From here you will have direct access to Kaon’s Archives. When last I was here, I knew that the internal mainframe had been left intact. As long as the scraplets have not feasted, then you can still gain from it. Unfortunately, it no longer has access to the Grid and has been cut off from the super mainframe located in Iacon, heart of Cybertron’s archives, and flagship for the Hall of Records.”

Yet, Megatron rolled his great pauldrons and gestured for Orion to approached the massive console, and so he watched his charge apprehensively come into contact with the cold surface.

The first touch came with tentative reverence, as Orion splayed out his touch to the liquid-like input array, still dark from lack of current.

For the first time Megatron felt as though he had an ally in this duty given to him by Primus. If anything could help restore the natural integrity of and nurture his charge into the Prime so promised, it was the reliquary of knowledge available here.

“This… feels so familiar,” confessed Orion, who dared not to turn from the center console until after the silence that followed.

For a klik they stared at each other, then Megatron added to the confessional, “This is where you belong, Orion.”

“Why? I thought I belong with you,” Orion turned away under the heat of what he stated.

Uneasily, the massive weight shifted under the implication, but Megatron still continued forward with paramount gentility in his raspy voice. “You do, but I am only part of who you are. You are an Archivist, Orion. Although not your ordained destiny, I have never seen a spark more at home than you in these halls.” Megatron fell his pitch, then confessed to the stale winds, “It was a mistake to remove you from them.”

Orion permitted silence to slip between them both with silken weight as he began to pull back and ponder Megatron’s statement. Even with an intelligence rarely matched as Orion, the archivist's intense contemplation beguiled the enormity of layers burying Megatron’s meaning; without a doubt, clarity would return and bring sharp focus to the words. So drawn was the archivist to the console, even while it stayed cold and offline, that no question was immediate to follow, and certainly none that followed the proclamation.

Rather than give opportunity of focus on what had been confessed, Megatron stepped forward and activated the console. The center one was the first to register, and flickered to light with sleepy alert. In succession followed the band of other consoles that fanned out from the first, until five others on each side alarmed with the first stream of data to run through their displays in millennia.

Orion’s fins twitched and tracked the crackle of fresh charge warming the chilled circuitry, and his head practically spun as he gazed in marveled splendor at the running stream of code that sped by with greater intensity as electric heat began to spill out. The archivist fluctuated his field, which rippled with excitement and was dazed by the deluge of stimuli.

Superimposed over the raining code, the HUD displayed a prompt:

 

 

> » `SYSTEM ACCESS REGISTRY:`  
>  » `SYSTEM ACCESS CODE:`

Obediently, Orion stepped aside to give Megatron first access to enter the input command permitting user interface.

“I do not know how—”

Behind Orion the greater mech walked and pulled their frames together with rear to front, and in doing so had enunciated their size difference; the top of the bot’s helm reached only to where Megatron’s waist began to drop into his hips. “You will learn.” Megatron’s stronger and larger servos held onto the archivist’s shoulders, and straightened them tight. One came up and grasped the back of the bot’s helm, forcefully turning it towards the display screen in front.

“This is your primary display, Orion. Focus on this, and the others are your peripheral. Do not get distracted with any of the others, not until you learn to manage this. This console system utilizes dynamic interface relay and A.I. feedback. You will learn from it, and it will learn from you. Do not overwhelm yourself and start small. Even if Kaon’s Archives are no where near as vast as Iacon’s, it will still overload your processors if you allow it too soon.”

Orion reached out and touched over the large servo behind his helm, and the contact electrified sines between their digits — byproducts of the thick atmosphere.

“What is it I am supposed to manage?” Orion had not removed himself from the touch or removed the contact over Megatron’s servo, and let this stilled exchange linger same as the dust in the chamber's air.

Megatron was drawn aback in shocked awe as he felt the waves of contentment swell off Orion the longer their contact lingered, and with it came the first relish of ozone that both bots could taste; only the elder knew its meaning, but Orion swayed in naive repletion.

Still and stoic, Megatron dropped his line of vision from the center display that now transfixed Orion’s sight. Lower too fell his voice, “We have an energy crisis.” Magnetism kept their contact there, trapped under the archivist's small servo; Megatron felt at the whimsical mercy of the innocent bot.

Silence again, and neither one moved. The consoles continued to spread out its spidery web outward in execution of initial protocols that examined which of the superior databases were still online and accessible, then dutifully reported back with initial errors, while other logic algorithms attempted to bypass the damaged sections.

Then, after the longest time, the screen went black, and finally flickered with an input request after a long milliklik; the system had come truly alive online. The antechamber sparkled like an ignited brain module, in true splendor of Kaon's once great cultural might.

Megatron removed his servo and felt a cold emptiness; Orion flinched from the absence, then stepped forward towards the console with digits splayed out.

“Noted,” he said, then gingerly began to feel out the interaction with his interface screen. Within nanokliks the digits returned to dexterous splendor, mesmerizing Megatron with memory of how rapidly they once moved with skill. With confidence that Orion would regain a piece of himself, despite what had been locked behind the firewall’s barrier, Megatron turned to extricate himself.

“Megatron?” The loud fall of his steps had briefly pulled Orion out of the library’s world, to retreat a step in reverse off the precipice he stood upon.

“Stay here, Orion. Focus on your task. I have my own.” The long suspension bridge extended behind and before him, traversed with each thrum of his steps. At this distance between the two Cybertronians, an echo formed. Further than the intimate one familiar within their caves, Megatron felt unusually small within the structure’s hold.

“Very well. I will stay here and search for a solution to our problem.”

Megatron had no doubt… for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do not forget that kudos and comments help add fuel to my thirsty fire; your feedback often inspires me when my self-esteem hits a low and I feel I have no energy for this. I also have gotten great perspective on my own works reading what everyone has had to say.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orion gets a taste of knowledge, but the discovers that the fruit has thorns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _{{ This is voice-over commlink. }}_   
>  `This is computerized text.`
> 
> * * *
> 
> Thank you to Andromeda_Prime for beta-reading, and who was also a sounding board of support along side Zuzeca and Reyairia.
> 
> My apologies for the lengthy wait.
> 
>  **Please remember:** Kudos are really good, and I appreciate them. But, comments are even better! Tell me what you like, what you love, what makes you frown, your theories, what you hope will happen. Not that I'll grant wishes, but sometimes I do get an idea, or get one about whether I'm succeeding at certain things.

Echoes of retreat died off the antechamber’s spherical walls, and Orion fell into a lull by their steady fall; the slam of the heavy door behind Megatron was just solid enough to startle Orion from where he stood, and yet he did not retreat his own gaze off the interface array before him.

Under his blunt touch the solid surface responded with liquid care, and colors danced in symmetrically laid out patterns from the center. The flat keys were a mosaic array that ignited with unique harmonics to various degrees of contact pressure, and almost played music under his inadvertent cord.

Bit by bit as he moved without familiar care, Orion’s audio receptors found a pattern to the tunes played out by the strike of each tile, and his coordination processors began to piece together what gesture could elicit what new note.

Then, suddenly the explorative harmonics were interrupted by an out-of-tune gong that sounded from the upper screen, and Orion glanced upwards to the ignored centre display.

The systems alarmed of its careless use, and a string of jibberish commands flickered on the translucent plex with overlaying error warnings; in his exploration, Orion had inadvertently confused the system and earned its displeasure.

“Oh—My apologies,” he said, although with doubt that the system would recognize the intention; Orion felt no shame at his out-spoken choice.

He was a machine, and this was a machine, and to him it felt to make sense that courtesy be exchanged by default rather than by proven merit.

After several tries the screen was cleared of his erroneous input, and once more the screen flickered patiently for his desire.

Obviously, the entire amphitheater was for one primary purpose: research, and like all other machines that Orion had crossed, it desired fulfillment of its principal function. Yet, Orion could not figure out the method it began. Rather then beginning at the start to resolve a singular query, it started with a peculiar prompt.

> `» DATA PROJECT (1)RETRIEVAL OR (2)CREATION: ___`

So, Orion chose to retrieve, and immediately realized that it had been a choice in error. Without a knowledge of how to navigate an intensive storage of past databases, Orion was lost in what past researchers had created on the mainframe’s research branch.

Frantically, he retreated back to the first prompt, and requested a new creation.

Step by step it asked him, and several times he made errors along the ways. In the end, Orion had to specify where the system would reach into which quadrants of the library or if the entire library would be accessed by the terminal’s mainframe. The quadrants were composed of the superengrams, and soon he figured out that only a small portion were visible within the amphitheater’s hollowed sphere, and extended outwards into the main complex. Each quadrant covered a specific range of subjects, that grew with each additional port of data storage.

Perhaps a skilled user would know how to limit, but Orion was skeptical of his own ability. Even something as simple as energon opened great possibilities, as it was more than just the fuel the Transformers lived by, it was also the lifeblood of their entire world. While the operating system warned him to not enable extension of the search throughout the library’s super infostructure, with the caveat that other users would experience decreased speed of response, Orion opted out in the end and access the entirety.

For a machine as advanced as the library, it came to life with the speed of a hibernating dragon. Orion watched as electric-blue pulsed through the massive veins, igniting each tile of engrams to glow in its kaleidoscopic majesty. Once more he felt small within the sphere’s cavern. Yet, he gave not into the intimidation of the moment, and observed as the variety of colors flickered in the massive chamber’s curved walls.

With a tremble of his helm, Orion pulled his gaze back to the display’s surface, and replaced his digits on the input array. Each time he went to use, his clumsiness improved bit by bit; something within told him to learn by sense of touch rather than the coordination between his optics and his digit tips.

Although improvement came, so too followed the erroneous inputs by unskilled digits; Orion had to backtrack and undo the damage of his uncoordinated efforts, and although the occurrences were regular, they showed a slow improvement with each new trial. Despite the betterment, Orion began to grow frustrated with the system’s interaction. Intuitive though it may be, and he quick to learn, Cybertronian and access terminal had yet to find true harmony.

Orion felt certain that there had to be a better degree of interaction, and held onto the expectation that with practice and familiarity ease of use would so too improve.

With a vented sigh he dismissed another HUD window that had been summoned on the prompt of an incidental command. For the half-dozenth instance, Orion had been prompted to augment the input between the user and the system.

Glyphs depicted a range of pictographs, and Orion found familiarity in their sight. This time the screen held a hovered menu, and Optimus erased his dismissal to stare at it. A niggled curiosity scanned his vision over the depictions.

Orion remembered the sight of one, that had been utilized in the earliest cycles since his systems came online. Megatron had employed it to connect their processors and downlink information directly into Orion’s brain module.

By instinct he reached out and covered his servo over the left ventral plate, just under a diaphragmatic plate divider. Instructions warned of no more than sixteen ports at a given time—

Under his touch he wondered how to open his panel, to examine his own anatomy to review the secrets within. The cumbersome angle made it difficult to see the closed plate, even that far down his torso’s expanse; Orion was top-heavy and broad.

Over the plated seams the dull contact of his touch continued, over smooth and unpolished metal that still managed to shin in the dim light and through the grime.

Inquisitive thoughts circled on the puzzle of his own frame, and Orion wondered how Megatron had managed to easily to will his frame into compliance. What sort of command could he give? Or was there a button? Over the surface his touch ghosted to look for a trigger, and it would seem the secret lay in his thoughts.

Sub-conscious command, barely in any difference than the command to move an extremity or increase ventilation, held onto the key to unlock his frame’s secrets.

 _Gasp_.

Plates clicked and parted, and Orion’s thinly armored exoskeleton revealed an anatomical array of quatro-headed casings housed behind the retracted protective cover. Even to hover his touch over the embedded cable heads and into the field of static that hovered over them.

A tingle dropped lazily down his spine, through his leg struts, and finally rest at his pedes.

Upwards glance caught sight of a bed of opened ports, mirror the inverse schematics displayed on the HUD’s input prompt. There were several of each variety, that glowed in dim hues in many shades, most likely to pair with the necessary variety of each biological option.

Orion’s wonderment pondered the sensation of connecting as depicted. Even in the time lapsed since Megatron had connected with fresh and nearly blank brain module, Orion could vaguely recollect the sharp comfort of another mind’s code slipping and entwining with his.

Another hiss of metal slipped by, and Orion glanced down just in time to see one cable follow another and fall out onto his open servo. The tangle of four wires entwined between his digits. Electric-blue danced and turned white under pressure, and the stimuli sent warm static that buzzed into Orion’s frame.

He trembled with subdued pleasure.

One head, seemingly more dominate than its triplet peers, either crawled or fell between two digits and Orion grasped onto it. He knew this to be an act of intimacy with himself, and was startled by the intense sensation of sensuality evoked when he thumbed the cable’s head; the other three joined and tried to ensnare him independently.

“Oh—”

Self-exploration came natural then, to illicit stimuli until Orion’s internal HUD superimposed a registry reading of heat built-up through his frame; fans clicked on and exhaust heat curled into the chamber’s chilly atmosphere.

Forceful to focus, Orion glanced back the array of input ports and approached it, looking wide for where to fit. Hungry little plug teeth sparked beneath his touch as he brought it towards the array, to spit out electric sines with eagerness, and as soon as it clicked into place Orion once more felt his spinal strut shiver.

The other four cables followed the first cable’s length, and instinctively slipped into beach port to pair. Lingeringly, Orion drew his soft grasp back up the bundle of cables, and enjoyed the return of feedback against the silicone-covered mesh that surrounded fiberoptic cables; anatomical extensions of his neutralnet.

Amidst the newness of this kindled stimuli, Orion felt at ease to be so interlocked with the system.

Wading into the stream, Orion was met with cold depths at the end; Megatron had instinctively been warm with consciousness, and even hot on the outer edges. No doubt there was a vastness beyond where it entered at first connection, and the information out of reach lapped at Orion’s mind.

With a deep breath and an optic on the display’s read-out, Orion dived into the depths and waded through the penumbra to look inward…

With hopes that he would not drown.

Orion’s mind was then submerged in depths that had seen beyond spectrums of light and shadow. Still, hues existed with static charge that overtook his senses until the world outside of his processors and beyond his spark was no more. Here in places without comprehension, his consciousness blossomed and spread like wet paint in solvents. Strings of information hung in the fluidic mass of darkness and grew out of a greater abyss. Their encoded hues sparkled and twinkled in the darkness, intersecting the light of one into another, until a great web canvased the unbreachable void. Each thread was like starlight spun into fibers, swaying in the viscous currents that moved solely by the force of information’s momentum. Like fruit on a vine, buds of light winked at him, and practically sang to his mind. Though he felt spread through and diluted, Orion could feel how to slowly draw in the compositional molecules of his thoughts, and reconstitute them.

For now, however, he wanted to embrace the strings that webbed around and tethered him from one thought to another, and swim through the tides. Where others would have drowned, Orion’s struggles only strengthened him as he learned to swing from each thread, and swim along the current’s motion. Each subject and string of information wove into another, with even the greatest of distances accessible, no matter how frightening the drop may have looked. It was all around him; above, behind, in each direction where the darkness could have spread out. Yet, the lights never seemed to yield, and only bent to the strongest current.

The journey had begun on its own, baptizing him into shallow reefs with nary a singular other than: energy. Cybertron’s entire existence was a tapestry around such a subject, and Orion was best to follow the tide as it brought him to energon and its various types, the history of how most varieties were developed, harvested, and processed. With it came the peripheral bundles that brushed against his touch, pairing with it the bonds of history and social implications that was always so enmeshed with Cybertron’s primary supply.

Through his journey, Orion learned of the basic infrastructure that once latticed Cybertron’s surface to bring raw crystal and undiluted liquid to refinement centers; how it was fought over, how it built structures of social order, and fueled great conflicts.

A tidal wave to such a young mind. Yet, Orion only swallowed whole what would have drowned; somehow, he just knew that comprehension could come later, as gathering was essential to the now.

‘ _Now_ ’ may have been a constant, but the ‘ _here_ ’ was ever changing around him. As a bead along a cord of string, Orion’s constant motion took him all over, and his momentum only gained with intensity. Unsatisfied, he took to a speed that was approaching maximum velocity for what his processors could gather; bits of information fell to the wayside, rejected or shot over as he proved faster and faster from one thread to the next.

Drawn as he was by instinct and attraction, anyone would have missed the warning signs. Around his physical form, the great amphitheater flickered dully, but not quite into darkness, then it pulsed with blinding intensity. The primary generator was damaged, its electrical currents unreliable; war, scraplets, rust, and decay had taken its toll. Orion’s usage had drawn more and more power from the fragile generators, and the system compensated with the lag.

However, where the system may have tried to grant forgiveness for its failings, reality was not so. Electricity surged through the memory engrams, activating them in rows and columns. But, what Orion saw was the filaments of light glowing brighter and brighter, calling him towards the next.

The next would always be better than the next; this thought drew him further and further, faster and faster.

In the distance, a cluster of threads were felted together so bright their knotted core turned white. Like an electrognat, Orion was drawn and struggled with the current’s intensity towards the far-away destination. All around him the fibers flickered and winked, but Orion did not see; all he saw was that bit of information that he just had to get. There was no explanation of why he needed it so much, other than the instinctual draw that took him away and pulled him in with the oncoming tide.

Had Orion paid any heed or knew any better, he would have seen the signs.

Before he could reach out and pluck the fruit from its webbed branches, all the portents and signs had finally culminated to the end; first the darkness that diffused the light, and then a light so blinding it turned hot and it burned.

Then, all there was, was burning darkness.

Shoved back into his mortal consciousness, Orion stood and stared at his translucent reflection in the console’s main display; his optics were too wide and too bright, his vision singed around the edges. Electrical webs darted off his fingertips; he whimpered, and the cables were forcibly disconnected from the system.

> `» ERROR: SYSTEM OVERLOAD  
>  » CONNECTION DISENGAGED  
>  » SYSTEM SHUT DOWN`

Metallic heads on the ends of his cables fell to the floor with a pitter and a clang; the noise sounded far away. Yet, he could feel the vibration climb into his pedes and into his leg struts.

Orion’s olfactory sensors registered before his neuralnet finally recovered from the shove; it was ozone and burnt, a small plume of smoke wafting from his open panel. One servo came down to touch the exposed array, and caught a tangle of overly charged and raw cables through his digits.

Then alas it came: _pain_.

Until he came here, Orion had only seen parts of the labyrinthian underworld far beneath, and the network of mining caves that tunneled under the surface. Megatron guarded him and guarded him well; Orion had been kept safe, so pain was not something he really knew.

Now it came without mercy, relentless and daunting with its blow.

Only a whimper echoed throughout the theater, followed with precursory silence before the clang of his frame joined the cables. Even as he fell, his HUD blinded him with warnings of overloads and surges, streams of damage reports filled the corners of his vision, and overlapped the opaque world that dissolved into pulsing pain.

> `» DAMAGE TO PRIMARY CONNECTOR CIRCUIT BOARD  
>  » TERTIARY FIREWALL COMPROMISED`

Just like the console, Orion could see his internal systems override his commands and begin to shut down his frame hard. At first he fought, but the fight only brought on more pain, more whimpers to crescendo into empty oblivion. So, he gave in.

First there was static, then there was darkness.

At least what was dark would be cold.

Sentient life appeared to always ponder its awareness; even the most traveled of beings could come across the circular question from one species to the next. Cybertronians were no different from humans in such a regard, although what shaped the theories may have sometimes been altered. They wondered such questions such as: what are dreams? Cybertronian programming scientists explained that their brain-modules dreamed their dreams to process through the subconscious, and work through unresolved errant strands of code. Philosophers posed a question of reality’s existence; was reality like sound that ceased to be heard if no one was around to witness?

Orion would be unable to answer that; he was no refined philosopher, although he did ponder great questions in the small corner of his world. All he knew was that sometimes reality would flicker back on, and he would see glimpses of the world without him.

That world seemed without order or explanation. In such a world, Orion was Orion, but he was not himself. The voice was the same, but the words did not belong to him; they were as commanding as they were gentle, and they were said with an expectation of compliance. Size was an issue here; the things were smaller, but he had also been thrown out into a much larger world that dwarfed him beyond the borders of their planet. The boundaries were no longer the edge of the caves, but far into the stars and the void.

Such a world was filled with great sadness and unyielding pain, with only moments of serenity that shuttered by. Faces of yellow, blue, orange, and every other shade ran by him. Some stared at him with hatred that he had never seen or could comprehend, while others met him with admiration, respect, and devotion. Their optics stared back at him through lenses of red, blue, and even yellow. They all had one thing in common: expectation.

Between the frames of images without context, Orion also saw the empty amphitheater sit dark in one frame, and then back to the ambient glow he had known. He could hear the staccato hum of silence, then the echo of faraway pedesteps that beat steadily before speed was picked up. Overlapped with the unrecognized, Megatron’s face peered through, and his words were unheard; the question went unanswered.

“Foolish youngling,” comforting acid laced Megatron’s voice.

Orion barely managed a groan, and sank back into darkness just as he was hefted like a remarkably light burden. Then he became a burden carried over vast distances to trek over Cybertron’s greater terrain.

In the journey taken, Orion saw a glimpse of valleys and deserts, ruins of cities, and their names coalesced in his grasp, then fell away when he tried to draw them out of memory. Over their images, Orion could see great swaths of fire and billowing plumes of smoke rise into the sky where they flew…

How was he flying?

The noise from below was either deafening slumber, or the beat of rage and agony. Fire licked at the sky and burned the moons, but Orion rose on the flames. Echoed voices cried out for him, but not his name, and he ascended onward and forward.

Darkness still cooled the pain; Orion liked the darkness, and he wished he would stay under its hypnotic comfort. Eventually, the unexplained staticky flickers grew further and further apart, and disappeared by the time their descent had begun.

Static finally receded, though its sound danced on the edge of his glossa and the edges of his optics. He could see confined darkness, but he also felt the burning pain. There was a sphere of light hanging over his head, and voices that talked in murmurs out of the depths. Their words were obscured to him, muffled through layers of invisible static, but one voice was not without name.

“Megatron…?” Even now he spoke, yet still could taste burnt ozone.

“Knock Out! He is regaining consciousness!” Although the announcement could have been heralded news, it was tidings without welcome, or so the tone said. Whoever Knock Out was, he was then demanded to do something of the pain.

Vengeful pain writhed Orion until he felt long digits turn his helm to one side and expose the back. There, a pressure dug into a cable and he heard a hiss. Then, the darkness came back and swallowed him whole.

The darkness was blissfully cold.

* * *

Megatron could have never accounted for the panic that cursed him; care and concern had not been his of the past, save for what was his and what he wanted. To see Orion’s form prone had sent high-voltage currents through the great tyrant, who moved at his great speed to cross the distance of the narrow bridge. Megatron’s pride had always been his undoing, that and his fear. But, they rarely ever were for the sake of another, not unless it circled back around to Megatron and his ambitions. Yet, there it was: dreadful concern for another.

Power radiated through Megatron, but it only made him feel weaker for it. The strength of his servos were useless for any other reason than to bodily carry Orion to the wreckage of the old Decepticon warship. Only fate had been so kind to either of them, and Knock Out’s discovery was fortune’s cruel humor.

There was not a Decepticon around that Megatron wanted to face. Fear and betrayal might have looked back at him, with all those failed expectations he had proclaimed and promised to all that swore fealty to him. Some Decepticons may have been conscribed through fear and intimidation, and most were certainly kept obedient for it. But even the most reluctant recruit had at least seen some hope in their fearsome leader, and certainly never surrender.

Plates flared and rippled as he hovered behind Knock Out’s shoulder. Megatron stubbornly reminded himself that he had not surrendered; he renounced. There was a significant difference in his optics, and that was all he had to explain. After all, the Decepticons were formed in his name and under his ideals, and they should bow to his wishes and be torn out under the same.

Really, Megatron felt that part of him was just too scared to resume the old fight, to wear the mask of a monstrous warlord that harbored no weakness born of… mercy.

Mercy was needed in spades, and Megatron accepted it in his subconscious struggle against Unicron’s yoke.

Razor sharp claws twitched as Knock Out fussed and fought with the damaged sickbay equipment, but the red grounder’s voice forcibly focused Megatron’s drawn-out thoughts back onto him; the doctor always did like being the center of attention.

Almost as badly as Starscream did.

“What?” Others would have asked for a physician’s repetition with softer words, or at least cordiality warranted by the illustrious position. Megatron, however, was not known for being polite. While he had no sigil of Decepticon command on his frame, and Knock Out’s had always been hidden, he still addressed the smaller mech as the Lord of their former cause, rather than former Lord of their cause.

Knock Out’s glance said in silence what he would not dare: ‘I said—’ But, he just dropped a tool and spoke aloud once it was retrieved. He had said, “I have to do a neural scan of his network.”

Then silence, and Megatron was already staring at his much-too-small charge as though staring at Orion would speed up his recovery. He waited for the inevitable questions.

“My liege, is this who I think it is?” Knock Out asked while he worked, and even set about to make his task quieter; he didn’t want to miss a word, not even if he whispered.

Megatron stared at the soft expression on the bot’s unconscious form, and answered with a tone of someone carrying news of the dead, “Yes.”

“But, my liege, how? Prime went into the AllSpark, and he was still a big guy. How could he be—”

“Quiet!” The command cut Knock Out short, but his old master still spoke. “Will he recover?”

Taking the bait for what it was worth, Knock Out glanced to the read-out on the cracked display; his fingers tapped while he thought. “The scan is not complete, but from the look of it… I think he will, just needs some time. Where he was damaged is no simple part of our anatomy, but the neuralnet will recover,” said the doctor. His red ringed lenses surveyed the damage again, and his glossa could not hold back his flippant commentary, “I gotta say: of all the places to get an electrical surge, an interface panel is not one of them. He’s shut down hard from the agony, which is for the better. But, don't worry, he'll be up and ready for some kinky cable play.” The doctor gave a smarmy grin of innocence towards the glower sent his way.

All that moaning and complaining of pain got on the doctor’s nerves; he hated sick patients.

Orion’s burns were extensive, even when localized to the central interface array. The ventral circuitry was exposed without any acknowledgment of intimacy, and singed unnatural colors. Just the sight would send waves of sympathy pains to anyone that looked.

Knock Out almost asked if it was the result of some rough plug-n-play, but bit his own glossa rather than ask such a thing. His prurient thoughts must have been betrayed in his glances, because Megatron gave him a growl out of his flight engines.

“See to his repairs,” Megatron commanded, with all the veracity of someone still Lord of All Things Evil. He turned towards the exit and began to march, although obviously with some reluctance. Stubbornness pulled the massive mech from where he had no instinct to leave; every base code told him to stay with Orion, to protect and to guard. But, Knock Out would never harm anyone under his care, and the longer he stayed around the racer, the more he would suss out of the situation. “Oh, and Knock Out?”

That obnoxious smile looked up at him; so eager to please, and disgustingly conniving. “Yes, Lord Megatron?”

“See that he has a new finish. His plating requires protection, and I know you can at least handle the task of a paint job.”

* * *

Gears clicked with each new focus cycle, until Orion’s vision began to sharpen and reality came along with it. Of course, pain followed suit, but the intensity was duller, and the bite was mild compared to its gnaw. Still, it was rather much, and Orion winced as soon as he tried to sit up right.

Whatever noise he had made also promptly earned him a reprieve from the stranger in the room. “If you want to make everything worse, be my guest and move,” said a mech painted obnoxious red; the shade was just a little bit too cool for Orion’s personal choice.

“W-where am I?” Ask Orion.

“This is the _Nemesis_. It used to be pride of the Decepticon fleet, but… now it is slag. Luckily for you, I happened to be here when our friend Megatron brought you in.”

Orion flickered his sight and then asked another question, “Who are you?”

With a curt tsk and saucy grin, Orion got his answer: “Knock Out — personal physician of Lord Megatron.”

While the other seemed all too prideful of his designation and title, Orion was puzzled by it. His brows were knitted together and a frown trodden his features. “Lord Megatron?” It just didn’t fit right to him, but Knock Out didn’t seem to notice; he was too busy paying attention to a bright console.

“You’ve got third degree burns on half your ventral-array’s circuit board. Good though it won’t need replacement, because trust me, you never want anything as inferior as a constructed array panel. Forged is always the best.”

“Forged? Constructed?” Orion had gathered great quantities of data in his submersion, but those terms did not register anywhere in his vocabulary database without stepping out of the context.

“Hm? Oh. Constructed means built by another bot, you know, like a regular machine; it isn’t alive. Forged is, well, it _is_ alive. We’re forged by the AllSpark, so, what we’re sparked with is forged.” The red ringed lenses darted to look at him, and he asked, “Got it?”

“Got it,” Orion answered, though, not really. Orion just wanted a moment to contemplate the implications.

The pain had lessened, or he began to get used to its company. Either way, the archivist's curiosity spurred him to try and peer at the source of light on Knock Out’s face. Before he could reach it, the pain punched him in his open wounds, and the doctor turned off the display.

A claw shoved him flat. “Stop moving, or you’ll rupture the medical mesh I’ve got on you.”

The tangle of five cables was sprawled out over his chassis, down his thighs, and onto the berth. Dark spots of brown burned down them in long lines, but Knock Out’s contact didn’t register at all; it felt numb, and that worried Orion.

“I cannot feel my cables.”

Knock Out brushed off his concern with a roll of his decorated shoulders, “That’s because I’ve got most of your array anesthetized. If I didn’t, then you’d be in a lot of pain, and I really don’t like my patients screaming unless I’m the one making them.”

Orion almost apologized, but instead he watched the pale facial plates that moved over him. Work continued on him, and a hummed ditty filled the silence.

Much of Orion’s time was spent in silence. Sometimes the noiselessness was easy, natural even. Other times, it was a struggle, because he wanted to ask questions, but Megatron was either absent or unwilling to handle the barrage of curiosity. Knock Out had so far answered his questions.

Testing the waters, he asked, “Megatron said… that I was a foolish youngling. Will the damage be permanent?” Orion watched Knock Out for signs of agreement, all he got was a wicked glint and then a nervous cast towards the closed doors.

“Well, I don’t know if what you were doing was foolish; Megatron thinks everyone is a fool, particularly anyone that gets themselves hurt. Plus, you’re not a youngling, not anymore.”

Orion dwelt on the statement of Megatron’s concern, then his processors leapt back and he asked again, “I am not a youngling… anymore? But—”

Knock Out walked over to the display that Orion had so painfully tried to see, and swiveled it around to show its contents. One image was a self-updating illustration of Orion’s framework, overlaid with intricate webs throughout his extremities and coalescing into a nearly solid mass that ran through his greater chassis. The other image was of just his helm, that looked to be divided into complex compartments, and layers of relays that bounced back feedback from multiple processors at a time.

Pointing towards the image of his helm’s scan, Knock Out asked, “See that?”

Orion just stared at the doctor, then back at the scan.

“You’re not a youngling anymore, Orion Pax. You’ve developed past that stage. By our standards, you’re a full fledged Cybertronian, even if still young-ish.”

“Developed?” Each new context for pre-existing vocabulary required explanation.

Knock Out looked put-out, but it was an act. To have the rapt attention of another made his bask in such glory and self-satisfaction. Back at the refugee camp, Knock Out was inferior, and no one really asked him about medical questions.

“Our brain-modules—” Knock Out gestured to the compartments highlighted in Orion’s helm, “—develop rapidly in the first two metacycles after our forging. Your chronometer says you came online three metacycles ago. So, you’re fully developed, though… you might still be a fool.”

Orion cast a harmless look in Knock Out’s direction, and carried on the conversation.

“I know so little of what is normal for a Cybertronian,” he said, announcing the weighty subject barely above a whisper.

At first, Knock Out didn’t seem to know what to do, so he busied himself and worked onwards to pluck around the mess until he found something sought for. “A-hah!” He came back over and began to use it on the cables, somehow slowly removing most of the brown burns with repeated passage. “Well, I can tell you one thing that isn’t normal: the number of cables you have.”

Without a reason why, Orion felt bashful and suddenly wanted to reel in his cables and hide them behind his panels. The other panels were open, exposing the undamaged arrays of four, with their heads peacefully housed within.

“The number of cables I have?”

“Primus, you’re naive. Yes, thirteen cables is hardly standard issue. Most are issued with one cable, less have two. I’ve seen a couple with four cables, but they are all modified with constructed arrays, so it wasn’t like they were forged that way. You’re so brand new, you don’t even have a color scheme!”

Whatever agent had numbed his cables, it began to wear off and Orion began to feel his focus draw towards the contact stimulating the thin cords of fiberoptic cable. “Um.”

“Speaking of which, the Big M wants me to paint you after this is all over. Have you thought about what colors you want?”

Orion drew a blank and didn’t say anything, or even meet Knock Out’s gaze. There was pain and some pleasure whispering through his neuralnet each time the cables were pinched, pulled, or softly rolled between digits; all he could manage was a wide-eyed blink.

Knock Out spoke before he could muster a reply, and with something undefined in his optics, he said, “Let me guess: Red and blue, hm?”

The first coat of paint was still drying by the time Megatron sauntered back in, and Orion was coming to terms with the dull pain. For the most part he was in relative comfort, kept with less of an edge to his injury’s pain, credited to Knock Out’s work on pain receptors. But, the smile on his face was soft and earnest when he saw the hulking form of his guardian approach.

“I see you picked your colors,” Megatron said, looking over the unfinished paint job with some conflict on his face.

“Knock Out suggested the colors, but once I saw my options… it just felt right,” said Orion, who wondered if Megatron thought his choice in error. But Orion held no regret, only a small desire to see some doubtful approval.

However, to his surprise he got at least an inkling of one. “Hm, they do seem to suit you.” Megatron was unwilling to say more on the subject of paint, and instead asked of his medical condition. Overall pleased with the report, the former Decepticon was unprepared for Orion’s great announcement.

“Knock Out assessed that according to my neural scan, I am no longer a youngling,” Orion said, and expectantly watched his caregiver. Whatever he wanted from Megatron, it was a mystery to him, but the larger mech seemed to almost squirm under the report. “Does this mean that… you will no longer be my guardian?”

Until Orion had asked, Megatron had never contemplated such a period. Primus’ mission had seemed unyielding, and promised to extend until the small and simple archivist had retaken his exalted name. Not that Orion knew, and Megatron was far from ready to tell his young charge.

“You may no longer be a youngling Orion, but you are still young and require guardianship.”

“But, Knock Out said that when a bot develops past the youngling stage, they do not require—”

“Orion—” Megatron stopped himself, realizing that he spoke too loud and too harshly. Orion may have been naive and sometimes obtuse, but he was still a sensitive mech, and somehow Megatron was supposed to mould him into becoming the Prime they knew. This meant he somehow had to be— _by the pits, someone save him_ —nurturing. “—you may no longer be a youngling, but you are still young. You still require my protectorship.” Insecurity came upon him then, although it was not allowed to flourish. Still he asked, “Or, do you think you do not require guidance? Do you think you can survive out there without me?”

Orion was always so serious, even if gentle, and took the questions to spark. Megatron stood there while the bot thought on his answer; a niggling need of reassurance mounted his great pride, and he shifted uneasily where he stood.

“I do not wish to leave you, Megatron,” Orion stated sincerely.

After receiving his answer, Megatron released the baited vent he had held onto, and exiled it along with his wretched self-doubt. “Good, then you understand. You have much to learn from me, Orion, before you should go on your own. But, don’t think I’ll ever stop watching over you; you are mine to guard and to protect, and your needs are my own.”

Short of comprehending the full scope of Megatron’s implication, the young archivist reached out and wrapped his plain servos around Megatron’s wrist. But, it was truly his words that held the former warlord in his place. Orion said, “I also believe that I can help us take care of each other.”

When they met off the battlefield, Megatron worked hard to intrude on Optimus’ personal space, and test just how much he would get away with against the sheer force of a Prime's self-discipline.

There was once a time when the gladiator wanted Orion to hold on, to not let go, and to ground the reality of their draw with physicality. Now it just felt odd and fragile; he brought up his red gaze from the humble digits, and onto Orion’s face.

“How?” A single word was said with such incredulous disbelief, that others would have recognized its condescending tone for what it was. But, Orion accepted the question at face value, and tugged gently on Megatron to sit beside him on the medberth.

“You had asked me to find a solution to our energy crisis, and I may have some solutions. Do you know of energon packs?”

“Pacts?”

“No, packs, as in a group. It is a social order that functioned before the Catalysm, when there was no refinement plants,” Orion did not hold even a drop of condescension while he squirmed to provide space for Megatron’s massive frame.

Unfortunately, Megatron was still made uncomfortable, even while he gave his leg struts a break. “No, that was before my time.” The archivist had learned to quickly, whereas Megatron was as ignorant as any other hard-laborer could be. Some things of history slipped his awareness entirely, not even made up for when Orion had shared secrets of the archives to an eager gladiator.

To be blunt: if it did not unlock some form of power or means of conquest, then Megatron was disinterested.

Portions of Orion’s weight leant into Megatron. Not in whole, or like a love-struck fanbot, but just enough to transfer the vibrations from their engines through each other’s plates; Megatron wasn’t even sure their metal touched, or if it was just how they did.

Orion knew that Knock Out would fuss over the small scratches in soft paint, but he did not care. The pain he had endured was only all the more marked by the fact that Megatron had been absent when it happened. Comfort could be easily found for him in the older bot’s company, a comfort that could only be explained by the familiarity they shared with each other. Megatron was Orion’s guardian, and Orion was Megatron’s charge; they shared a base programming with each other that was nurtured each time they came into contact, blossomed when they explored each other’s minds. This was a foundation between them.

“Energon packs built on the principle of one or two larger bots foraging and gathering raw energon, and bringing it back to a small retinue of medium to small bots. These bots, though physically weaker, would consume the raw energon and process it through their internal fuel systems. The large bots would protect the smaller ones, and in return, they would receive processed fuel. In later generations, these frametypes emerged without the ability to internally refine energon. When governments began to build industrial refinement centers, they were built on a principle of replicating the original methods of ancient Cybertronians. Although, even the best plants was never as efficient as the pack method,” Orion recounted, summarizing what was probably a lengthy historical account.

Orion moved, and flicked his optics towards the display console Knock Out had shown him earlier; it was on stand-by now, but the archivist could still remember its vivid imagery. “I saw my schematics. I have the internalized fuel-refinement system the ancient Cybertronians once had… although, _why_ I was forged with such antiquated equipment, I am uncertain.”

Unable to answer the question’s implication, Megatron sat and thought about Orion’s proposal. But, one question bothered his simple, laborer’s processors. “How was the refined fuel shared?”

A buzz hummed out of Orion’s systems, a sign of sluggish processing. He shifted again by Megatron’s side, and allowed their fields to intermingle. With all the intimacy of an archivist, Orion explained without any signs of discomfort, “When needed, the fuel would be regurgitated from the final storage tank, and passed in liquid form. Usually through open intake.” Orion yawned to try and bring more oxygen to his spark, so that it would ignite his energon brighter.

Megatron glanced at his charge and saw how dim the light behind his lenses were. “That is rather intimate, Orion.”

“Hm, but it is efficient, and I am not bothered. We’ve plugged our processors together, and that is already rather intimate, even if it has been a long while since our last session.”

With a snort, Megatron almost ended the discussion then. But there was something to how Orion leaned heavier on him then that loosened his vocalizer. “Yes, but as you said: You are no longer a youngling. I cannot just root around in your processors any longer.”

Orion pulled back and watched his face with a gaze so heavy it would have bowled many other Cybertronians over. Luckily for Megatron’s pride, he was not most Cybertronians, and he sat there without a flinch.

“Why is there a difference from when I was a youngling to now?”

This time, Megatron did squirm, and resented Orion’s capacity to make him so self-critical. To his defense he explained, “You were more of a blank slate when we last plugged in, Orion. I did not have the time to teach you in more traditional methods, not while your survival depended on it. You have grown and developed beyond the simple youngling that stared at me with empty optics. You are now a full individual with a full personality, and processor interface is… intimate.”

Quiet came from the charge beside him, although Orion’s processors were obviously spinning with thought.

Megatron almost stood up, but Orion tugged on his wrist again, and kept him bolted in place with the sound of his deep voice. “Megatron, I have no one else to be intimate with but you, not even a friend. However, I do not blame you for my solitude, nor do I resent it. Your companionship… completes me. When you have allowed our processors to meld together, my recharge is smooth and not restless. I have also witnessed your subconscious distress when we are divided; I know you find our connection to be intimately—” Orion stopped in his mild speech to find a word, a singular word that might complete his argument; Megatron already began to feel the sway. When he picked up where he left, he said with only implication, “— _efficient_.”

Never before had Megatron wanted Knock Out’s intrusion than right now, but the doctor's disappearance endured. Megatron stood up, uncomfortable with the complex subject of plugging his processor directly into another bot, for a youngling was still very different in his optics. But, Orion was Orion, and there was something enduringly magnetic in how lusciously he seduced Megatron into compliant intimacy.

This time, Megatron did stand with most of his weight on one pede, and announced, “You need to recharge.”

Orion threaded their digits together and anchored Megatron in his place; their servos were an ill-fit, yet Megatron stared at them, and Orion seemed far too at ease. They had not slept with much distance between them, their stone slabs shared each recharge cycle.

“Stay.” Either a request or a command, it was simple, and said without complication.

Megatron stayed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orion gets his first look at the taste of what what hides in the shadows, and he also hears a first hand account of what it meant to be faced with the decision of whether to join the Decepticons or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Have no fear! This fic was never abandoned and I never intended to abandon it!** First of all, my apologies to those who waited the nearly 18 months it took for me to reply. A lot happened within the year and I was just not up to it in the slightest. Some of it was personal and I’d rather not go into, but the rest of it was pertaining to my cubital tunnel. Well, I’ve had my surgeries and I’m making some progress, albeit slowly. It quite literally took me all those months to get this chapter done, which is rather unlike me as I usually only have long dry spells between chapters, not in the middle of one. But, I was struggling with getting my mind to a proper place to channel the story, and then I felt as though I lost this segment of the story entirely.
> 
> And now for my notes pertaining to this long awaited update.
> 
> Mostly I wanted to touch on the subject of Knock Out’s story. This is all based on my headcanons that I’ve built over the years. Much of the inspiration comes from IDW’s recent allegories of Decepticon camps, and a bit of the story of Wheeljack in Transformers Armada. Self-evident from the content with it, I’ve disregarded RID15 entirely. Mostly because I have yet to see it, but what I have heard already tells me it conflicts with the pre-existing story and world-building I began to develop for this fanfic. If this bothers you, I apologize. 
> 
> Proposition for Artists: I will pay you a modified fee for you to illustrate something of this story that stands out to you. What would you like to illustrate and sketch? Please come talk to me energoncocktail+ao3@gmail.com. I would love to see what inspires you. But, I also don’t want to beg without offering compensation. Your talent deserves all the gold in the world!
> 
> Thank you to zuzeca & andromedaprime for beta-reading. Particularly to my Zuzu to stayed up late at night to talk me through my writer's block. She listened to me ramble and jumpstart my muse. She was the first I told her the different direction I was thinking of taking as originally intended, and her feedback was monumental. More than that, thanks to both and more for helping me through the past year. You each played a role in saving my life when it would have otherwise been tossed aside. You are the best and I dedicate this story to you guys.
> 
> Now to publish, and although I am very nervous about what you will all think, I hope it is enjoyable!

“Unacceptable!”

Knock Out motioned with frantic indignation at Orion’s prone form. “Now, my liege, the first rule of medicine is to let recharging patients rest,” he cajoled in hopes that he might be spared of the tyrant’s wrath, and to be saved correction to fit the brute’s designs.

The first rule was to do no harm, but he had been a Decepticon for too long to so quickly give up all his vices. However, he was not so lucky to be dismissed without anger, not while Megatron bubbled with rage as he wrapped a massive claw around the back of Knock Out’s neck.

A well-placed talon threatened to puncture precious fuel lines, and Megatron’s strength easily plucked Knock Out from the floor. He hung in Megatron’s grasp satisfyingly, like a mewling cyberkitten being tossed out of the nest. But this was no nest he had been forced to resurrect into a medbay. This was the derelict  _Nemesis_. The jagged lines of the  _Nemesis’_  damaged interior blended well with his—officially former—Lord’s silhouette, and the two seemed in synchronous disharmony with the abandoned ship. Everything once a prideful army was now products of the warship’s remnants. Knock Out had kept his polish bright, but he was still a cast off former Decepticon, whose badge of loyalty to the Autobots was given on a probationary basis.

They were strays, each of them. Megatron looked worse second only the  _Nemesis_ , whose shadows broke what little light they had, and Knock Out hated being here. He never particularly liked the dark, unless it was a temporary tactical advantage.

Same as everywhere he went and everything in his company, Megatron loomed over Knock Out. Unable to escape the clawed grasp of the former dictator, the red racer clutched onto the servos around his neck and prayed with shallow faith. Vibrations from Megatron’s arms traveled along the arm strut, through Knock Out’s armor, until the dangling bot’s pedes trembled above the floor in harmony with the larger mech’s flight engines.

“Explain to me,  _Doctor_ , why is that we are to stay behind while you go and gallop around with your _Autobot_  comrades? Last dark cycle, you acted like Orion was ready to depart come first light. So, pray tell, why do  _we_  need to remain in this decrepit old warship?” Megatron demanded, and spoke of the _Nemesis_  as though it had never been his righteous vessel of avarice; like the Decepticon cause, he cast it aside for his narrow focus and left it to rot under the broad shadow of his shame.

Clearing his static, Knock Out tried to recover, scrambling for words, twitchy digits nearly scratching his prized finish. “My Lord—I gave no indication of  _when_  he would mend, just that he  _would_ …” Instantly, he flinched.

But, the blow did not come.

Instead, the deep voice dipped into a hiss, and Megatron’s optics dimmed before igniting bright again. All preceding the query of, “Then why,  _Doctor_ —” Knock Out knew from the cadence in Megatron’s voice that he was somehow satisfied with the display of submission he put on. Without missing a beat he was asked further, “—why did you begin to paint him?!”

“Heh, well… I was bored.” What made sense to a capricious ‘ _healer_ ’ would be nothing less than foolishness to a galvanized gladiator.

Megatron stood taller, expanded the distance to the length of the subsequent silence, and regarded Knock Out’s answer through the reflection of his polished finish.

In time, the threat seemed to lessen, and Knock Out’s taut posture relaxed and he dared to move, to vent, to resume function of all systems beyond the survival modes.

“You were…  _bored_? Care for my charge is so—” Megatron’s finish was raw and terrifying, its sheen pocked with marks, sharp to the touch. He raised a single digit and placed it on the Doctor’s curved collar, leaving an imprint from the sharp weight in the delicate gloss. “—dull that you will waste my time for your amusement?”

Flustered again, Knock Out tried to explain, and raised two servos in surrender. “Orion Pax’s condition is stable, and he will recover, but it will take time. I’ve gotta solder several key quadrants of his circuit boards, and at least one cable will require rewiring if there’s any hope to salvage it, otherwise it would need to be replaced—” rambling onward, Knock Out silenced himself and looked back at Megatron. They both knew that the implications of replacing such sensitive cables would be to exchange something native with something inferior, and that would be a loss to Orion Pax’s peak function.

Judgment won out with silent approval from Megatron, and the medical assessment carried on without further break to the conversation’s flow. “I did not do any of that last night, not while I had to bring his core temperature to normal, and he is very curious specimen—” 

Based on Megatron’s sneer, Knock Out immediately knew that it was the wrong choice of words.  


“The time needed for his repairs will be arduous for such a—” Always one to kiss someone else’s aft, the doctor’s bluster came at someone else’s expanse and for the benefit of Megatron’s patience, “—bright young spark to be unoccupied. His healing is going to be a lot like… well, watching paint dry. Plus, I could never pass up a chance to show off my lambskin buffers. Not that I’ll use them on—”

 _Whatever—_ it made sense.

Somewhere in the tangent, Megatron was appeased, like a capricious god who grew suddenly wearied of his immediate vengeance; Knock Out would be spared, and maybe his finish as well. He uttered one simple command; “Quit your rambling.”

There was an addict’s relief in seeing another bot’s temper finally recede, and then dissipate.

“Yes, sir.”

Megatron was satisfied, but his satisfaction made him suspicious. So, again he tortured Knock Out with questions.

“Why are you going to leave us here, alone in this wretched slag pile?”

The tone was softer that time, though only reluctantly amended to such. His visual field kept Knock Out in the peripheral, always staring down lest he take a step out of line. Megatron thought of Soundwave’s old Minicon, that huntress Ravage, that played with solitary scraplets and glitch-mice with cruel abandon. Right now, it was Knock Out who had his tail caught under his claws.

Static cleared again, and Knock Out delayed to try and find a way to explain. “Pax should not be moved to a different location. I have to earn my keep and my freedom, which is probationary, by the by,” Knock Out spoke and got too comfortable then, casting a saucy smile towards his old Lord and Master. What came next out of his vocoder could have lost it, “You know, not all of us have the luxury of running around the wilds, exiled from the Autobots; some of us have to live with them.”

It took but a flinch and the red mech realized his folly, covering his trail with an instant reverse, “Other than Starscream, who remains at large still, is probably playing with his pet Predacons.” No one believed such a thing, certainly not Megatron, who was too aware of how little his Second had endeared himself to those beasts.

“We are vulnerable here,” stated as a fact, Megatron gave Knock Out a pause to defend the assessment.

“No one comes here, Lord Megatron. Whatever the crash hadn’t destroyed was picked clean by those who dared to come, which, no one does dare, mostly because of what it symbolizes to the others and—” Shifty optics darted away, down a long and dark hallway. Once it would have been illuminated with dim ambiance with light that pervasively stretched throughout the hull. Now it was a dark tunnel, unyielding to the light brought as an intruder upon the derelict grave.

Impatient for the dramatics of someone else, Megatron prompted with a curt query, “And?”

Megatron knew the fear of Decepticons, having inflicted it on them as well as on their adversaries. Whatever had shown on Knock Out’s face may have had forced humor or skepticism, but something else narrowed his optical irises. “There are… stories about the wreckage.”

“Unless these stories concern me—”

“They’re rather ridiculous, really. I certainly don’t believe any—”

“ ** _Knock Out_**.”

Wince — savory and bittersweet, but Megatron was at least satisfied that he held some sway over the rambling doctor.

“There are stories that the  _Nemesis_  is haunted.”

Now it was Megatron who looked down the great length of hallway, conjuring memories of the schematics overlaid with experience. Even in the dark the damage was present, and only made the hull of Trypticon all the more a carrion’s delight.

Silence came out, so intensive and pervasive in its obfuscation that the ambient echoes made Megatron and Knock Out’s running systems fade quickly off into the oblivion. Though the mines below had been familiar confines, the  _Nemesis_  had been altered in its ruined state that now, in its altered state, the very officers to once prowl its decks knew not where its rerouted corridors led; they were blind and in uncharted territory.

* * *

This was no welcoming abode, not for any brave little Autobots, not even the seasoned Decepticons. None of them felt welcomed here, even Megatron, who finally let a sense of forbidding envelop his field.

But, for Orion Pax, the  _Nemesis_  was no more a haunted ship than the mines he dwelt within. For now, it was a chamber of darkness that he sank into, and was piled with empty dreams. Every ounce of energon was being burned to fuel his autonomic repair systems. The damage done to his systems was located in all too sensitive and intimate regions, and the wound burned feverishly. The chilled air flowing over the open gap was both a relief and a grievance. This was the sensation he first became aware of as he returned to consciousness, even before the light was absorbed.

Clutching his injured side, Orion tried to raise his upper frame at the waist and groaned at the effort. A smaller servo pressed against thoracic plates in opposition to his weary efforts to rise to. It was the voice he heard arguing—in fear—with Megatron that stated, “Yeah, that won’t be a good idea. If Lord Megatron sees you doing anything to hurt yourself then I’ll need the jaws of life to straighten my struts.”

Finally, the HUD pinged back that several hours had passed since he overheard the argument. With a snap of his optical exterior port covers parting, and the lag of his lenses blurring the environment, the younger mech would finally get—

“Nnngh—Knock… Out?” Sound vibrations felt heavier than air, and were slow to break free from the lingering static of Orion’s vocoder. He struggled to focus, but even through the dim and the haze, Orion could make out a shorter figure painted in brightly polished red.

What he could not see was the saucy smile sent his way, but Orion could practically feel it in Knock Out’s voice. “Miss me?”

“No,” Orion said without intended harm; he was literal in answering such a plain question. Instead, he spoke with a sharp intake to his words—rapturous pain. Other questions would have followed, but before the world could refocus into clarity, another pinch of pressure hissed against his neck cabling.

“Yeah, time to sleep, Pax. Otherwise, we’ll both have an angry warlord to deal with.”

The next break into consciousness was without much parting of darkness. Now that the pain had begun to pall, the anesthetics weren’t so quick to dull his senses, and Orion’s optics focused faster. But, what he saw fit more with the mines than the environment of a medical facility; not that he had first-hand experience in any other medbay.

It was darkness that surrounded him. A heavy twilight that permeated the room, save for small twinkling lights in various hues of colors—equipment from the facility. The same machines made small noises like the glitchmice scurrying through the mines, and Orion thought he might have heard the distant patter of the same creature exploring in search of raw and processed materials.

Creatures were stirring - just not the welcomed, familiar sorts. First to be called for was the first to be longed for. “Megatron?”

Silence.

Legs thrown over the edge of the slab, Orion sat up right, barely wincing when he stretched the delicate medical mesh over the repairing wounds. On his second attempt he asked, “Knock Out?”

Silence, again.

Then there was a static whisper—aimless in its origins. Orion felt like it was a touch of out-of-reach digits. The silent static spoke in muted wordlessness, muffled beyond his range of hearing. Drawn towards it, the young mech’s curiosity called him to find an answer to an answerless voice. But, there was no means for him to reply where he lay, so it would mean he would have to rise up and out of the berth.

Less pain meant less weight to keep him on the berth, so Orion slid off and landed his pedes onto the ground with a heavier thump than expected. No matter what the wounds would say, it felt good to stretch out the tension cables and circulate the cydraulic fluid out of stagnation.

At first it was just an exploration around the immediate area, then it shortly expanded to the entirety of the room. Most of the equipment was dysfunctional, obviously left in disarray for an extended time. That which did work was largely left in stand-by, but some woke in response to his proximity. There were the few of the equipment looked too new and too clean, thereby ill-fitting with the rest; Knock Out must have brought them from… well, wherever else there was. Orion scanned the read-outs and saw schematics of himself, in addition to theoretical experiments for seemingly nonsensical applications.

Only a few of these experiments showed any signs of going beyond the theoretical and into applicable. One that caught him was something about the combined application of two substances called  _Synth-en_ and  _Dark Energon_ ; the reports made Orion’s empty tanks flip-flop in disgust.

Suddenly, he knew he was low on fuel—hungry. But, after reading what little he managed of some questionable experiments, the would-be archivist opted out of risking any energon he could find in the medical lab; it was time to explore the boundaries. At the door to the room he stood, contemplating the wisdom of stepping out of the relative safety. Without Knock Out or Megatron’s presence it was difficult to judge the wisdom of his innate curiosity, but he was drawn to leave the safety of the room—the same curiosity that spurred him to explore the homely mines.

Silence repeated itself.

Flat servos were laid against the industrial door, where he could feel that silence and touch its heaviness. Vibrations of the muted static came through again, tickling up his struts and into Orion’s neuralnet—from the base of his neck and into the tail of his spinal strut, the young mech shivered, then pulled his hand away. The doors parted and revealed another labyrinthine structure that was far removed from the mines, yet so similar.

He hadn’t even begun to look for the panel to open the doors; they did it on their own.

Using lenses well-adjusted for the dark—thanks to the mines, Orion stepped through the parted doors and found himself in even greater darkness. Three steps onward and he was out of the doorway, which then prompted the two panels of the sliding door to reseal themselves and leave him stranded in a pitch without light.

Occasionally the ship’s systems flicked to life, with the feel of the rattle of a dying engine. Unable to explain how he knew such a sound, Orion concentrated more on taking advantage of these brief respites from the dark.

Without Hadeen’s light the mines were an abyss of darkness that stretched out within tight confinement. Orion had learned to navigate, and felt at home. Filaments flickered when he activated his pectoral lamps, and saw deeper into the space laid out before him. Whether it was daylight or moonlight, Pax wouldn’t have known if his chronometer had not been functional; here in the dark, it was all an illusion, just like the morphing shadows that crept along. But, even in this depthless solitude, Orion could not shake the sensation that he was not alone, and something was summoning him forward.

He traversed several hallways and corridors, coming to a few dead ends where the doors would not give, or the bulkheads had collapsed. Several times he nearly walked into a hanging thatch of exposed wires dropped from the ceiling. But, his luck and skill eventually ran out, and he became entangled in one of the largest hanging coils. As he hung there, Orion briefly felt akin to a puppet on a string. Unlike Megatron or Knock Out, he was without sharp implements at the end of his appendages. He was at the mercy of his skill and patience, both of which were near exhaustion.

Stray electricity crackled in small sines, bleeding power from the already dead ship. A few currents caught Orion, shocking his senses and irritating his wounds. But, he could not afford to be distracted. So he continued to work to untangle himself and regain the freedom he had lost.

Halfway through knotted mess, a deep and far away rumble came further from the depths of the ships. It was quiet, but not because it was small. No, Orion froze and thought of how far it must have come because it sounded mass; the ship trembled with faded aftershocks.

—  _boom_  —

Again the sound, this time a little closer, and he froze in a fear never experienced. Straining his audio circuits he listened for it again. The rumbles came closer with three new instances that came louder and in shorter successions; whatever it was, it was coming, and it was large enough to make the warship’s hull tremble softly.

Then, just when the next expectant drum beat was to follow, silence. Whereas the absence of the terrible noise should have been a comfort, it stopped Orion’s spark because now he was wondering ‘ _What is it doing? Does it know I am here? Is it coming for me? Is it thinking how best to attack?_ ’ Megatron had been forthright with him about the creatures surfacing in the mines from the Underworld below, and how many of them were predators that would drink their energon and consume their frames for raw materials; as explained to him, it was all part of the circle of life on Cybertron—it was natural. But, this was different and all together wrong, and Orion had no way to explain that paranoia to himself and talk himself out of the mental state he fell into next.

Innate but inexplicable instincts told him to panic, to return to whence he came and hope for safety. The calmness that served him well in his earlier attempts at removing himself from the bramble of cables was now gone. He jerked in the mess and tried to pry it off. For every new knot he undid, several others tightened on his limbs, and new ones began to choke off his ability to move.

Just as he freed his left pede, a set of silicone vines worked their way around his neck, wrenching themselves tighter with even the slightest movement. The more erratic his movements became, the more his wound hurt, but the more he just ignored the pain—it had become dulled. Electric adrenaline rushed through his circuitry, and hot energon surged through the fuel-lines. Then…

—  _BOOM_  —

It was closer than ever before, worse yet rather than the next beat a new noise came to follow—

A growl, which also vibrated through the hull, even so far as to send small ripples through the cable vines.

In terror never before experienced, he froze.

Right then, Orion knew this had been his fault. He was foolish and arrogant, listening to his inexperienced curiosity and ignoring Megatron and Knock Out’s warning. Of course, he knew that Megatron just did not like not knowing exactly where he was at all times, and Knock Out just feared the larger bot. But, there was a chance he could still be safe.

Then, the static that soft coaxed him to follow began to wrap around him. It started on the small of his back and crawled around his torso, up his back, and down his legs; his embrace felt like thick tendrils. This time it was thicker, even so far as to weigh down Orion’s erratic E.M. Field.

Somehow, it told him:  _Be still_.

With all the self-control he could manage to wrest away from his panicked state, Orion lowered his pedes together and centered his weight. There was no words between Orion and the static that held to him; he just knew, with words that he could assign but they came solely from him. He was told to be unseen.

How was he to be ‘unseen’ in this boggart darkness?

This time there was no thunderous fall of anything, just an encore of the more terrifying sound…

—  _GROWL_  —

Orion shut his optics off and sealed their ports, commanded his biolights to full-dark, and his engines to stall. While he waited for the next sign of the unknown, he could hear sounds from the Nemesis he had never heard before; a liquid dripping from the ceiling and onto the slopped wall, there was a glitchmouse nesting under one of the floor panels.

The glitchmouse went still in its own anticipatory fear.

He waited for the next ripple of sound to come from the warship’s derelict bowels. Just when his systems began to overheat without his coolant systems or his tension cables ache from the unnatural position, the static slowly released him from its grip.

—  _boom_  —

Again it came, but altered somehow and in a way that Pax dared not hope for.

—  _boom_  —  _boom_  —  _boom_  —

It was true! It was retreating.

Freed of the snare with great effort that was not his own, Orion landed on the floor with an echoed thud. It had felt like the vines untangled themselves, like they had gone from elastic to limp and what length extended past the height of the hall now pooled at his pedes.

Wounds ached at the damaged circuit board; either the anesthetic had begun to wear off, or he had pushed the medmesh too far. But, he had found himself turned around, and tried to oriented himself before he was even upright on his pedes. But, at this junction, everything looked identical and unfamiliar. Though the pain was nowhere as severe, the effects had done more than just dull his pain receptors, it had also dulled some of his other senses. The HUD feed could not find orientation; the hull gave back too many false returns to accurately read the planet’s polar magnetism. So, he was left fend for himself through slow and patient means.

This would have been amendable, had Orion not felt as though those shadows were creeping up on him with an uncanny purpose; not all shadows were accountable, and some seemed caught between the physical and the metaphysical. On occasion he had seen one move while he stood still—a predator stalking its prey.

Unable to shake the feeling and still lost, Orion had no choice but to pick a specific direction and follow forward… one step after another.

It should only have been the sound of his own pedesteps, and maybe the tiny scampering of little carrion vermin feasting on the Nemesis’ remains. But there was an echo out of place, just like the shadows, yet none of it synced up. Again, the sensation of off-ness just ramped up until Orion stood still, and shivered upwards from the balls of his pedes to the top of his helm. This was unlike what he felt and experienced underground, within the relative safety of the mines.

Just then, it occurred to Orion that his entire world was framed within the limited view of the dwelling he shared with Megatron. He no longer experienced the same claustrophobia that attempted to creep on him when he was fresh from the underworld. No, he was more at home in the confined spaces, but not here, not on this derelict ship where the darkness was so oppressive as to drive out the levity of life.

The shadows were moving again, flickering back and forth like black candle flames. It darted back at him, then ran away from the light of headlamps. To test a theory, Orion deactivated their cool white light, trading them out for the solitary cast of his cerulean optics; though they pierced the dark, they were but a whisper in a howling storm.

With only the light that pierced his lenses to guide the way, the dark became all the more oppressive, suffocating his spark with each pulse of its threaded light. Then, suddenly the static lifted from being cold and heavy, to being coy and enticed for a chase.

Nonsensical ideas surfaced, dissociated with experience echo-whispered to him, something about a white creature, a hole, and an event called a ‘ _tea party_ ’? None of it made sense to Orion, and no concern to make it so while he focused ahead on the darting flicker that flew ahead.

What was a ‘ _tea party,’_  anyway?

Again the shadow moved on phantom wings, fluttering against the halogen light of cobalt—it moved like the wind, and Orion followed it through the dark. It felt like a chase to catch the fading twilight, but it was something sought for to sate a boundless curiosity. Unable to ascertain why, the feeling from it went from purely ominous to a marvelous sense of trepidation. Yet, it summoned him forward and it answered his accession with a steadily rising staccato beat on each pedestep.

It was with this tempo that he followed the unseen path, guided by the shadowy object that led him forward until it disappeared through a wall, right beside a terrible gash in the hull. Orion stopped and stood frozen before the breach, subconsciously touching a servo over his own wound that had not fully healed; sympathetic response?

He considered turning his headlamps back on again, but then remembered the adverse effect it had with the fleeting flicker of shadow. So, he strained his sight and craned his neck to look as far into the wrecked passageway as he could. Somewhere beyond was the remainder of a door, evidently rendered nonfunctional in the wake of the destruction that had ravaged the vessel. In its place was the furrow to the right of where the shadow had disappeared.

Even in the dark he could make out a familiar setup to the medbay. The similarities were not exact, but evident in the design. HUD schematics reported that he would be able to fit through the split metal—though the fit would be tight. Orion peered his face through the jagged edges and glanced around…

Half filled with a dreadful expectation to see a wicked smile curved out of needle-like dentae—inexplicable imagination, Orion stared into it and pushed out the irrelevant thoughts, which came without a tangible source or reason.

Light strobes flickered on and off with a great struggle.

Stepping into the chamber proved to be like walking into a tomb. For all the creepiness found in the Underworld and in Megatron’s mines, nothing could compare to the atmosphere of this room. Orion looked upwards towards the ceilings, following the vertical lines of towering monitor with two additional screens attached to the sides. All three were cracked and formed a webbing of damage, whose edges caught and scattered the light from his optics.

At the core of his spark and somewhere in the deeper recesses of his processor, Orion felt another inexplicable sensation that crawled out and through his struts—familiarity. The sensation took hold and raised his servo without conscious volition, moved his pede, until he stood before the console and touched its worn surface.

Just then, Orion felt like he was standing in an impression weighed into the floor panel, whose size was too large for his pedes to fill. Slagged ash and heavily laden dust spread into the air with a soft sigh, leaving behind the imprint of where he had come to stand.

He felt small and ill-fitted.

By then the sensation of being stalked had receded into the distant corners of the room. Having felt brought here, Orion questioned the significance, especially in light of the dismay that settled across his shoulders.

The dark here was truly cold and terrifying; he longed for the mines, where Primus’ slumbering vents warmed the depths.

Orion retrieved his touch from the console, and for his efforts was rewarded with a long charge of electrical current that shot from the input array and into the light digit to be pried from the surface. Then, he turned away towards the entrance he now held intents to exit from.

But, the shadow did not always release its prey, not after finally catching it in its web.

Whatever had contrived this journey through the ship, was not so willing to let Orion go easily. A small piece of static charge flung itself over Orion’s shoulder, and flung towards the consoles. While Orion may have told himself it was all his imagination, his chrome plated facial derma felt the brush of an undefinable mass brush across his cheek ridge and pass through his pauldrons. By instinct he moved to follow, and spun around so fast that for a split nano-klik, Orion felt he might have seen something enter the console.

Glimpses of streaming code stuttered on the console’s display. Then the black pane turned to a heavy midnight blue. A small vertical line blinked towards the middle-left of the screen. Orion would be unable to explain how he knew it, but he just knew that something was waiting for him.

Finally, after he loosely laid both servos on the input panel, Orion said in a ventless word, “Hello?”

* * *

Knock Out’s voice had a soft deepness to its pitch and was never shrill. But, he could shriek like the best of them. It took him a while to discover the great new mystery. He had entered the medbay humming a little ditty he heard while on Earth that stuck with him.

“Sweet dreams are made of this—” Most of the rest was hummed out, or belted out with incorrect lyrics until he reached, “Hold your head up; Keep your head up, movin’ on.” In the middle of the refrain he turned on his built-in speakers (they were Bose—how did humans make speakers better than his?) and played catchy beats without their accurate vocal accompaniment.

Mindful of his audience— _who should have been there_ , he said while sashaying a hip and closing a drawer. “I love karaoke. Breakdown and I would jam out; drove ole Starscreecher crazy, but I think Soundwave dug it. I caught him typing along to the tempo a few times. Don’t know if he actually liked it or if he just enjoyed anything that Starscream hated,” he said over ‘ _Yellow Submarine_.’

Chipper, he sang on with gusto until he was practically performing.

It wouldn’t matter to him how wrong he got the words; it was just him and Orion Pax. So he worked to continue cleaning up his old medbay, skipping from one song to another, none of them finished or entirely correct. By the time he reached another tune and sang about how a metaphorical ‘we’ would “rock you,” Knock Out’s voice had finally reached a fevered volume. He was shameless, refusing to hold on to that forsaken shame when Megatron’s little pet bot wouldn’t know the difference. By now the Vehicons would have tried to join in, but Knock Out got nothing but silence. Finally he turned to look out for Orion, eager to see the bot’s face.

“Um,” he muttered, the music fading away like a deflated tire.

“Orion?”

It took a second before his processors caught up, and when they had all reason reminded him that Megatron had left  _him_  in charge of the bot.

“Oh scrap.”

Dropping all tools, the racer bolted out of the room like a Terrorcon was right on his heels, yelling into the hallway “ORION PAX!”

The ship swallowed whole his cry.

It took a great deal of blind luck and a whole lot of defying fear before Knock Out found Orion. Although, it was more like he stumbled onto the larger youngling. But when he had, Knock Out panted vents to desperately cool his wrought system stuttering out, “There you—” Words dropped off when he caught sight of something flickering on the console. His senses told him he had seen a flash of blue and black with a horizontal line that danced like a sound synthesizer. But it was gone before he could recognize or identify it, leaving them in the darkness save for the light of his optics and their biolights; the room was dark enough to suffocate the meager light - consumed by the Nemesis’ eternal hunger. Whatever he thought he had seen, Knock Out knew he heard voices, chiefly Orion’s; he felt like he had just intruded a conversation. As far as Knock Out knew, the Nemesis was mostly non-operational. Entire sections of it had been rendered useless in the crash, and what was left had been mostly gutted by the Autobots and a few stray scavengers.

Conversing….but with  _whom_?

Orion turned towards him, looking the smaller bot with a disconcerting frown that had not been seen since…

Well, not since the last time Optimus Prime had frowned at him disapprovingly.

No one was ever exempt from Prime’s disappointment, be they Autobots, Decepticons, Warlords, tiny humans, and even those pretended not to be bothered still fell to that frown. Knock Out could have flinched under Orion’s brief expression, fleeting though it was between them both. But, this time the disapproval was not directed towards him, which for that Knock Out was grateful.

How Megatron could stand the frown long enough to sustain the war, Knock Out would never know; he thought he had seen Starscream flinch once or twice. Just following Unicron’s defeat and Megatron’s apostatizing towards a rather sudden redemption, Knock Out looked into those great blue optics and felt the full weight of why the Autobots lived and died by the loyalty they felt for their commander. Loathe as he was to admit it—he didn’t dare - Knock Out almost gushed to receive any amount of praise from the Prime.

Then, he was gone, like all good starts for Knock Out. Left behind with the Autobots who couldn’t fill Prime’s tires in total numbers, even on the best of days, the former Decepticon Officer once more did his best to fit in for survival and maybe even something akin to acceptance.

“What were you doing?” he asked, the tone of voice cautiously clipped, immediately following it a clarifying query, “ _Whom_  were you taking to?” In the corner of his visual field he could see Orion move in place, even glancing behind his shoulder to look at the screen gone dark.

“I was talking with a  _friend_ ,” he answered, bewildered how the obvious could be so readily missed.

But that made no sense to Knock Out, who looked around and pinged his energy detectors; they were alone. The  _Nemesis_  hardly outputted any power in this section.

“What…  _friend_?” he asked. Static charge began to form at the base of his spinal column, like a knot of dread—he suddenly felt a paranoid imagination telling him that they were not so alone.

Orion seemed comfortable, though, answering as though the it was perfectly sane and not at all the opposite. “My  _Shadow_  friend,” he said, perfectly at ease with his reply; Knock Out did not feel the same sense of well-being. Disquiet came from the  _way_  Orion said the word ’ _shadow_ ’ and the look in his bright-blue optics—it could have equally just been where they stood, and a figment conjured out of Knock Out’s all too lubricated conception.

He stopped to look around, taking in the room that had once been a primary hub used by skilled Vehicons and the senior staff for the purpose of accessing the ship’s vast mainframe. Although its direct light had always been dimmer than even the rest of the vessel, it had been alive with an energetic ambiance when personnel filled its chambers and explored the depths of Decepticon knowledge & the remnants of Cybertron’s collective works. Once upon a time a bot of the same name, although vastly different frame of form, had occupied the space with a fresh Decepticon brand courtesy of yours truly. Broad in shoulder, the amnesiac Prime filled the space alone and used his ingrained experience to crack the mysteries of the Iacon Archives, effectively resurrecting their civilization in a digital record.

Now it felt like they were in a mausoleum; it even smelled of death. Frankly, it creeped the racer to stand where they were. There were no shadows here, just that mass of darkness pressing down on their frames, eating their light, stealing the voice of any audience, and making even their steps heavier.

Knock Out did not like the dark, though he faked it well; the only things a ‘Con were supposed to be afraid of were Megatron, Soundwave, and being anything like an Autobot. That which was dark was alone, and if there was one thing the flashy grounder could not stand, it was loneliness. He knew just how destructive loneliness was. After Breakdown’s death he had nearly lost his mind. “You need bots your own age,” he answered. Incandescent white strobed against the dark, until his built-in headlamps turned on, shattered the darkness into many shadows that cut away at their features. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better.

Watching the blinding light, Orion’s lenses calibrated their configuration and adjusted for the brightness. The conversation continued onward with soft intonation, “There are no bots my age.” Orion had spoken a sad truth, but a truth nonetheless. Prime had successfully returned the  _AllSpark_  to the  _Well_ , and in its elation it had burst forth thousands of sparks that lit up the sky, blinding them all in a beautiful shower of kaleidoscopic coruscates that fell back from heaven.

None of them were with form and remained coruscated manifestations of the metaphysical. Primus never gave them bodies and all attempts to apply theory of cold construction failed; not that Shockwave ever stopped keep trying—there were stories. Instead the sparks roamed Cybertron and strayed from all points of civilization. Observers told tales of some sparks trying to return to the  _Well_ or join the twinkling stars above, in their failure to accomplish the former, they always avoided close contact with any creature. Sometimes, though most were rumors, a sparkfly might be seen in the corner of an optic’s field of vision, briefly flutter about and then disappear. Knock Out  _thought_  he might have seen one in a shade of magenta once; he fully accepted that it might have been the exhaustion and soured high grade.

Optics were on him as if they’d never left, optics that once looked over a battlemask and filled with resolution only a Prime could give. Now they were wider and opened, soft yet unrelenting, and Knock Out felt their disconcerting weight.

“I have met no one other than Megatron and you; you are close to my age, in the terms of a Cybertronian lifespan,” Orion said, in a voice that betrayed the smallest hint of wrongness. Even if  _this warship_  and  _those mines_  were all the youngling had known, obviously he knew that not all was right; Megatron’s charge was lonely.

Briefly, ever so briefly, like a flutter of a sillofly’s delicate wings on the wind, Knock Out could feel something akin to a loss felt solely for himself, and it moved his spark. Not his usual narcissistic variety that kept his pride up after being stripped of it repeatedly in the course of the war. He was a young bot, with barely dried paint when Cybertron went to hell. His city had never stood a chance against the Decepticons.

  


When nothing came from his companion, Orion asked with genuine interest; something no one had dared to voice since Breakdown’s jovial curiosity. “Why did you become a Decepticon?”

All right, not a question he expected—although, Knock Out admitted to himself that he probably should have. Prime probably considered the same thing with every Con he met along the way.

Rather than make a fuss of it, Knock Out shrugged one of his shoulders and said in answer, “Eh. Why not?”

“But… Why a Decepticon and not an Autobot?” Unsatisfied with the answer, Orion pressed onward, pointing out, “You are an Autobot now.”

Feeling the stare of the curious bot, Knock Out covered the new brand awkwardly placed over his spark.

“I go with the winning team. The Decepticons were conquerors and they didn’t take prisoners.“ Briefly he paused to wonder when the Cons went from being ‘we’ to 'they,’ but he just shrugged it off for deep introspection was not his way. "We had heard what happened to the last city that refused them, and this was before the  _Praxian Last Stand_. I either take the oath and mean it, or I become scrap for their spare parts,” Knock Out said. But, now it was all too serious and he just didn’t like that. Turning his lipplates into a saucy smile just for Pax, he then added, “I wasn’t going to let them ruin this luscious finish.”

Orion contemplated it all, although unlikely the part about his finish. Everything about the taller & younger bot spelled here was someone who never did anything without much thought.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here. Shadows are never very good conversationalists; I’d know.”

* * *

Several cycles later they were settled into the medbay, where Knock Out puttered about, giving Orion small tasks to keep the bot busy while he recuperated and they waited for Megatron’s return. In that time they had a few conversations, most of them dominated by Knock Out’s rambling.

Orion felt as though the bright red bot was eager for someone to talk to, someone who would listen to him, offering the slightest acknowledgment that he even existed. Fortunately for Knock Out, listening was something Orion did with great skill.

Mostly the topics were light, complaining about the Autobots who supervised him, Ratchet’s persnickety demands, and the N.A.I.L.s that slowly had become the majority.

“What is a N.A.I.L.?” Orion asked, but only after the sixth time they had come up.

“Non-Aligned Indigenous Life-forms,” Knock Out announced, pairing his answer with a wave of his servo. “Basically, they didn’t join the Autobots or the Decepticons and got out during the war or when Prime ordered the planet be evacuated. Though most were gone before the end, there had been some holdouts. I don’t know why, I should have gotten off the planet when I could. By the time it was too late the choice was generally to join the conquering armies or be fed to their smelting pits for more scrap metal; though the Autobots were as desperate to win, even if they were being decimated—must have been Prime’s morals or some slag.” Only Knock Out could say it all so flippantly, but Orion turned and saw how as he spoke the bot refused to look at him.

“Is that what happened to you? Did you join the Decepticons rather than die?” Suspicion came in his gentle question, but Orion knew he was treading on tender subjects.

Knock Out kept his tires towards him, and it took a while before he answered. Orion wondered if anyone had heard the bot speak with such softness before, as though the war had actually reached the sassy red bot. “Yeah… I held out too long for the last available transport trying to get off the planet and away from the war; I thought the city would survive the siege,” he explained, slowly building into the greater story.

It was hard to share, and Orion could tell. Another bot came up frequently in conversation, someone named Breakdown. There was an obvious closeness, and the bot wondered if this other Decepticon had been the last one to even bother asking Knock Out about his own experience of the war.

So, he remained quiet, and in doing so he had invited the other to continue. “When our city’s defenses fell… we had already been long out of fuel. Bigger bots were shutting down from a lack of energon, and the rest of us were trying to just hold on to survival. ‘Cons tore down our defenses like they had been burnt mesh all along. Those of us that stayed behind… we were eventually rounded up and we thought we’d be given the same choice other cities were given: join or get slagged.”

Reaching forward an open hand, Orion placed it upon Knock Out’s shoulder; the bot flinched rather unexpectedly, though it fitted with the story.

Knock Out decided he would rather look Pax in the optics than keep the servo on his pauldron. So he shrugged it off and turned around.

It was then that Orion could see a best-kept smile barely held on. The expression was crooked and mostly to one side of the white lipplates, and though obviously the other bot had tried to look nonchalant, the smile just failed to make it to his optics.

“That was when I learned how far the Decepticons would go to win the war. We were marched to giant smelting pits built outside the city. We were just… marched to them; they needed more materials to make weapons and… we were a good source.” Every ‘we’ Knock Out said did something unsettling to his optics.

“You’ve… never told anyone this story, have you?” Orion asked.

One hip to the side and a hand to follow, Knock Out rolled his optics and huffed, “Didn’t have to. Breakdown was behind the lines—he was an Autobot then, and he got caught in the march to the pits. The Wreckers left him when they evacuated; he knew what it was like to be left behind.”

“I’m so—” Orion couldn’t even get his platitudes for their sake out.

“Look, I didn’t want to be a Decepticon or an Autobot. I just didn’t want to fight. But, when I saw how far the ‘Cons were willing to go to win… well, I knew they would win, and I wasn’t going to die some nameless martyr turned to slag. I wanted to survive, and Breakdown joined me; he knew the ‘Bots were going to lose.” At the end of his spiel Knock Out caught himself and shrugged before the following correction, “Well, they were losing then. No one anticipated how things would play out when we came to Earth. We just were chasing Prime, and somehow he used that dust-ball planet to win.”

Blue reflected off red paint before falling to the fresh badge of the Autobots. The end of the story had now come to its obviously conclusion. Out of observation Orion said, “So, now you’re an Autobot?”

“Now I’m an Autobot. Better benefits and they’re nicer,” Knock Out stated, and he brought back the cheeky mirth that made the dark conversations easier to bear.

In appreciation, Orion smiled and even chuckled. “I think I’d like to meet the Autobots.”

Instantly, all good humor left Knock Out and he turned serious, looking briefly as though he was truly older than Pax. In his face Orion saw not the sad sternness of before, but something gained only with experiences as yet unshared.

“They would really like to meet you.”


End file.
